Slippery souls: The otter's survival instinct

Otters are often misunderstood creatures. We've all seen the adorable videos of otters playing with a lucky group of people in a swimming pool. Or the latest video of otters at a zoo nosing snow off a wooden bridge. It was this mesmerizing cuteness that beguiled the public and led to the conservation of otters in Europe when their numbers in the wild were dipping.

In reality, otters are a dangerous predator—many species are solitary creatures at the top of the food chain, while others are a machinated family network of hunting and rearing young. They are also a good indicator of the health of the aquatic ecosystems in which they live—as otters disappear, we should get worried. While the image of a pair of fluffy sea otters holding hands is usually what comes to mind when we think of these creatures, the actual otter is much more striking: a sinuous predator perfectly built for a life of camouflaging itself in the undulating water.

The first time I saw an otter, it was at the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati. I remember pressing my face against the glass as the chocolate-brown fur of Neda and Porkchop zipped past the window, slipping into the murky water. I followed, smearing my hands across the glass, watching as their lithe bodies almost seemed to slow in time while in the water, twirling and diving with an incomparable grace. On land, their legs were short and stocky, and when they played with each other, it looked like waves crashing over one another and rolling onto shore. 

A blurry picture of one of the otters in Newport Aquarium on a visit in 2015.

I fell in love with otters as soon as I first set eyes on them. They were the sea incarnate: the tangible manifestation of my favorite element, water. I imagined that when otters died, they merely returned to the swell of water that bore them. It was no shock to me that in my favorite book series, Harry Potter, my favorite character's patronus is an otter. When I took a Buzzfeed-style online quiz, so was mine. (Shout out to the t-shirt I bought at the Newport Aquarium emblazoned with a cartoon otter wearing round glasses and a scarf and the words, "Harry Otter.")

The next time I saw an otter, it was in the wild while on a camping trip with my mom's family. A brief and transient experience, the otter merely slid into the water of some Kentucky river. I caught a flash of tail and the impression of a flat brown head before the noise of my family's fishing activities scared it away. I squinted at the muddy water, but otters can hold their breath for an impressive length of time and have evolved to blend seamlessly with the current until they can slide undetected into a covered shelter along the bank. It was long gone.

Through the years, I visited Newport Aquarium frequently, and I searched for wild otters in every creek and river, never catching a glimpse of them. 

Then, in March of last year, my boyfriend and I decided to go to Dortmund, Germany, during my Spring Break while at Oxford to see his favorite soccer/football team in person. While researching what we could do in the city while not touring the Westfalenstadion or eating expensive schnitzel, I discovered something that set my heart ablaze: the Dortmund Zoo. On the welcome website, in big, bold letters, were the words "Otter House." The Dortmund Zoo boasts the world's largest population of Giant Otters outside South America, one of the rarest animals in the world. I was more excited to go to the zoo than seeing the Eiffel Tower (granted, I'd already seen it) or visiting the Cologne Cathedral. 

We walked an hour and a half across German highways and through residential areas to reach the zoo. My boyfriend, with a passable knowledge of German, bought a ticket for €4, and I accidentally snuck in without paying because I thought he had bought both of our tickets. The zoo was exotic and mesmerizing. We ate bratwurst and chips/fries for lunch, the food warming our frostbitten fingers. All around us were families enjoying the brisk winter day.

There was one building with sloths, an animal I'd never seen in person, dangling from the ceiling right above our heads, no barriers between us. I couldn't help but think about what horrible things would befall these slow-moving creatures if they were stuck in an American zoo without supervision and barriers to protect them from weak-willed teenagers or malicious vandals. The Germans seem to be guided by a stronger moral code: do what you're supposed to so society can function.

The Otter House was steamy, almost too warm compared to the frigid air outside. The room was divided in two: on one side, a huge exhibit with deep water and land; on the other side, a pair of otters in a grassy exhibit with logs and vegetation. 

There they were: the Riesenotter. In the larger exhibit, the Giant Otters moved deftly through the water and onto land in an endless cycle. They were, as their name suggests, giant: adult males can reach over 5 feet. They lacked the cuteness of their smaller cousins, all sinewy muscles and powerful movements. Giant Otters, native to the Amazon and hunted extensively, are one of the rarest otter species in the world, with only a few thousand believed to survive in the wild, and the privilege of seeing them in person was not lost on me. My boyfriend and I watched them chitter to each other, dive in the water, surface onto the shore, and repeat the sequence at least a hundred times, enraptured by the elegance of their dance. Then, just as if operating under a hive mind, all the otters simultaneously surfaced as a zoo attendant emerged from a back room to feed them their lunches of fish. After eating, they all piled on top of one another, falling asleep in a tangle of fur and snouts.

Photo credit: tracie7779 via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

When we finally tore our eyes off the Giant Otters, turning to the other exhibit, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at. The two Asian small-clawed otters, or Zwergotter, seemed to be playing, rollicking over the logs and pinning each other down. When I finally realized, I quickly averted my eyes. To put it conservatively, these were conservation efforts in action: a pair of mating otters. Given the choice, this probably wouldn't be my ideal memory of the Dortmund Zoo's Otter House to take with me, but looking back, I'm glad my boyfriend and I had this slightly surreal and uncomfortable moment: it reminds me of how difficult it probably was to find a pair of otters to be suitable mates and how we should celebrate the efforts of conservationists to save these creatures. Though not critically endangered like the Riesenotter, the Asian small-clawed otter is listed as vulnerable due to habitat loss, pollution, and hunting.

At the end of my time at Oxford, I allowed myself one book to bring home to prevent myself from overloading my suitcase. At Waterstones, I perused the neatly organized tables of books—from travel memoirs, to local fiction, to YA novels I had never seen in the States. I finally caught sight of a small table set up to honor the genre of nature writing—one of the only types of nonfiction that I enjoy. On it, one book called to me: Otter Country, by Miriam Darlington. The cover was blue, an illustration of an otter in a slightly different shade of turquoise seemingly floating in the middle of the page. It promised to be a sinuous read of Miriam's journey to find the wild otter in Britain. The £10 note was in my hand before I even fully processed it. 

In the flurry of returning to the States, internships, moving, and a semester back at Asbury, I didn't get around to reading my British bounty until recently. Now, I find myself longing for both another sight of the wild otter and the chance to return to the tangled, untamed brambles of the English countryside. Moreover, in light of the dangerous political climate for environmental activists worldwide, this novel about slowing down to encounter the wonders of the natural world made me realize something important about otters—and about myself.

Otters are a lot like humans in some ways. Different species live around the globe, each with distinct traits and customs. They are predators, often at the top of the food chain. Most of all, they are survivors. They adapt to habitat loss by gradually becoming unafraid of being near human activity. Some adapt to a lack of food by halting the gestation cycle until conditions are more favorable. They have learned how to camouflage themselves with the water, how to move undetected onto shore, and how to compete to survive.

But that survival instinct isn't always enough. The Giant Otter has only one predator: humans. Hunting and habitat loss have led to the Giant Otter being an endangered species, still declining in the wild. Other otter species, like the California sea otter, have managed to claw their way just above endangered after being hunted to near extinction.  

The greatest danger to humanity is ourselves. We pollute the atmosphere. We poison our rivers. We destroy the habitats of the animals that keep the delicate ecosystems of the earth in balance. We devastate vast amounts of forest every second. Like the otter, our survival instinct isn't going to be enough when food and habitat shortages put our cities in peril: we have to be proactive. Though we might not live to see the full ramifications of our actions, our legacy of conservation will live on and inspire future generations to maintain the garden in which we merely planted the seeds. 

We are the otter's only hope, and we are our only hope. 

To donate to the International Otter Survival Fund, which works closely with other organizations to protect otters in the wild and in captivity all over the world, go here. 

To find opportunities to get involved with wildlife advocacy, go here, or donate to the Wildlife Conservation Society as they do important work to save endangered species worldwide. 

 Photo courtesy of Cloudtail the Snow Leopard via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND