Show Where Jack Hanna Cares for a Baby Otter

People dear otters. Hell, Vox.com once employed its ain full-fourth dimension otter enthusiast. And I guess I get the entreatment. They concord each others'southward hands. They juggle rocks. Baby ones raised in captivity squeak when introduced to water for the first time. Legend has it they save human lives on occasion:

But in that location comes a betoken at which rational people have to put adorable hijinks aside and recognize otters for what they are: disease-ridden, murderous, necrophilic aqua-weasels whose treachery knows few bounds. They are not "wonderful animals," as Ms. Deschanel would have y'all believe. They're merciless hellspawn who use their intellects for not bad evil. Hither's what you need to know about these terrible animals, and why you should fear and hate them.

ane) What is an otter?

A river otter at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, gets some snow on his face.

Jaime Green/Wichita Hawkeye/MCT via Getty Images

Otters are mammals of the subfamily Lutrinae, one of two subfamilies independent within the family Mustelidae. The other, Mustelinae, includes badgers, weasels, and ferrets, among other similar mammals. Lutrinae contains vii genuses and 12 different species, spanning every continent save Australia and Antarctica; a 13th species, the Japanese river otter, was alleged extinct in 2012, similar many otter species before information technology. 4 different species of otter live in Central or S America, some other three in South and Southeast Asia, ii in sub-Saharan Africa, and one in Europe.

The two species constitute in North America are river otters and sea otters, the latter of which are also found in Japan and the Pacific coast of Russia. River otters are not currently threatened, and are pervasive in Canada and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico coastal areas in the US.

Ocean otters, by contrast, nearly went extinct due to aggressive pelt hunting in the early on part of the 20th century. While the governments of the Usa, Canada, Japan, and Russia signed a treaty banning the hunting of sea otters, it took the Endangered Species Act — nether which sea otters gained protection in 1977 — for a recovery to begin in earnest. "The saving of the sea otter," writes Glenn Vanblaricom of the University of Washington in his book on the animal, "is indeed i of the not bad success stories in marine conservation."

But the last forty years haven't consisted of unerring progress for the ocean otter. The species' recovery has been considerably slower in California relative to other areas. In Alaska's Aleutian Islands, the species has seen a marked decline since the 1980s.

Theories for what's behind the drop range widely, merely the US Fish and Wild animals Survey'south recovery plan for the species highlights predation, in detail from killer whales, as the most important factor behind the decline.

two. Do otters set on people?

You bet they do! A 2011 study found 39 anecdotal reports of river otter attacks in North America, 35 of which occurred after 1980. Either due to better reporting or to increased otter savagery, the numbers grew over the decades, from three in the 1980s to thirteen in the 1990s to 17 in the 2000s. A decent share of the attacking otters accept been rabid; in the '90s, 46 percent of otter attacks involved rabies, and in the '00s, 24 percent did. The researchers found 4 prior scientific publications documenting attacks, including one that reported a deadly otter attack in Republic of india.

To be fair, the vast bulk — 77 percent — of the attacks the researchers analyzed involved North American river otters, and none appear to have involved ocean otters.

3. So sea otters treat humans well?

Yous keep hoping that. I couldn't find whatever reports of attacks on humans from sea otters, just that may simply be a function of body of water otters beingness much rarer than river otters, and spending less time on or near dry country than river otters do. Moreover, sea otters have in at to the lowest degree some cases shown a willingness to assault primates, as in the case of the above sea otters in the Bronx Zoo, which killed a monkey with whom they shared an exhibit. I sea otter off the coast of British Columbia apparently raped and murdered a dog.

four. Well, sea otters are squeamish to animals besides monkeys and dogs, right?

An otter attacking an alligator.

Geoff Walsh/Facebook, via the Independent

Nope, they are horrific menaces to other species. And I don't just hateful in the way carnivorous species always are to their casualty. Ocean otters murder even when it doesn't provide them with food or offspring, like straight-up sociopathic spree killers. In 2010, veterinarian Heather Harris and her co-authors Stori Oates, Michelle Staedler, Tim Tinker, David Jessup, James Harvey, and Melissa Miller published an commodity in Aquatic Mammals documenting about 19 cases of ocean otters attacking baby seals. Here'south merely one:

A weaned harbor seal pup was resting onshore when an untagged male sea otter approached information technology, grasped it with its teeth and forepaws, chip it on the nose, and flipped information technology over. The harbor seal moved toward the water with the sea otter following closely. In one case in the water, the sea otter gripped the harbor seal's head with its forepaws and repeatedly bit it on the nose, causing a deep laceration. The sea otter and pup rolled violently in the water for approximately 15 min, while the pup struggled to gratuitous itself from the sea otter'south grasp. Finally, the sea otter positioned itself dorsal to the pup's smaller trunk while grasping information technology by the head and property it underwater in a position typical of mating sea otters. Every bit the sea otter thrust his pelvis, his penis was extruded and intromission was observed. At 105 min into the encounter, the sea otter released the pup, now dead, and began grooming.You read that correctly. After raping a baby seal to expiry, this psycho licked his paws, like Hannibal Lecter or something.

5. Oh … oh no. But if that's what male sea otters are similar with baby seals they mistakenly remember to exist female sea otters, what are they like with real ocean otters?

Approximately that brutal. Harris cites another report that finds that virtually eleven per centum of bounding main otters found expressionless on the California coast from 1998 to 2001 were killed, at least in role, by trauma associated with mating. Indeed, trauma is the norm from sea otter mating, not the exception. Here's Harris once again:

Copulation normally occurs in the water where the male sea otter will approach the female from behind, grip her around the chest with his forepaws, and grasp her nose or the side of her face with his teeth.…Facial biting by the male person unremarkably results in the evolution of pare and soft tissue lacerations of the female's nose and face that can occasionally be fatal.The problem is worse for females, of form, but younger males often mimic mating beliefs with each other, which can cause similar injuries.

6. This is merely horrible. Other species don't do this, practice they?

Oh, sure they do. Rape — or, every bit biologists unremarkably telephone call it, "forced copulation" — is a disturbing fact of life in the animate being kingdom. It'southward been reported in primates like orangutans and chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, and ducks, among many other species.

So that aspect of otter sexuality isn't besides unusual. What's weirder are a) otters's tendencies to menace baby seals, b) the fact that male otters kill an awful lot of the female person otters with whom they copulate, and c) the necrophilia.

7. Necrophilia? Seriously?

This visual is meant to represent decease.

(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Otters, human. From Harris over again:

In one prior written report on breeding-associated mortality, a tagged territorial male sea otter held a struggling female person underwater until her body became limp and and then copulated repeatedly with her carcass. Ten months subsequently, this same male was observed with the carcass of some other female bounding main otter. In both cases, the male was swimming, diving, guarding, and copulating with the carcass.

viii. Stop! I don't want to hear whatsoever more terrible things about otters.

Too bad! Here are two more than.

First, male otters sometimes concord pups ransom to forcefulness their mothers to give up some of their food. Hither'south how biologists Heidi Pearson and Randall Davis describe it:

A male person approached a pup floating on the surface while its mother was diving for nutrient. The male forced the pup under water every bit if trying to drown it. When the female surfaced, the male stole her nutrient (a clam), after which the female and pup speedily departed.The human equivalent of this is probably going to a grocery store parking lot, finding a woman coming out with a small-scale kid, and holding a gun to the kid'south head until the mom gives you some of her food.

Second, otters tin give you H1N1, better known every bit "swine flu," as our friends at The Verge have reported. Sampling along the coast of Washington State found more than lxx pct of otters in that location tested positive for H1N1.

9. C'mon, in that location's got to be something otters are skillful for.

Fine, fine, I'll give them this much: they announced to be helpful in the fight against catastrophic climate change. As explained by the National Wildlife Foundation's Robyn Carmichael, sea otters oft eat bounding main urchins, which in turn are known for eating massive amounts of kelp, which is very good at taking in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. More otters -> fewer sea urchins -> more kelp -> less global warming. 1 studyfound that kelp beds where sea otters are present soak upward 12 times every bit much carbon dioxide equally beds where they're not. The overall event isn't that large, but every bit helps, and otters deserve some credit for chipping in.

For the tape, I'one thousand not really against attempts to save ocean otters equally a species. Those efforts are admirable and valuable to the ecosystems of which otters are a part. I just think otters are jerks.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/24/5640890/otters-rape-baby-seals-monsters-bad