Animal of the Month: Sea Otters

By: Kaleah Syvirathphan

This is the first in a series of monthly columns written by our editors.

Remember those incredibly cute and fluffy creatures you saw cuddling in the animated film Finding Dory? How could we ever forget how they formed a cuddle party to stop traffic! Those animals are Sea Otters and the sad truth is no, they do not have cuddle parties in the middle of the road but they do sleep holding hands! The mother and pup will hold hands as they sleep in order not to drift apart from each other or they will wrap themselves in the kelp attached to the ocean floor so they don’t have to worry about drifting.

Sea Otters are a keystone species making them one of the most important species to our environment. However, they are currently endangered due to the fur trade, bringing their worldwide numbers down to a total of 1,000-2,000 in the early 1900s. Today, there are estimated to be just over 106,000 worldwide, with just over 3,000 in California.

Sea Otters feast on 40+ marine species including: sea urchins, abalone, mussels, clams, crabs and snails. Also, fun fact, Sea Otters have the densest fur in the animal kingdom, ranging from 250,000 to a million hairs per square inch, which insulates them. Sea otters are also one of the few mammals other than primates known to use tools. They use small rocks or other objects to pry shellfish from rocks and to hammer them open.

These mammals live in the shallow waters of the northern Pacific coast. There are two distinct sea otter subspecies in the U.S., the Northern sea otter and the Southern sea otter. Northern sea otters are found in the Aleutian Islands, Southern Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington. Southern sea otters, also known as California sea otters, live in the waters along the California coastline and range from San Mateo County in the north to Santa Barbara County in the south.

For more stories like this, expect Animal of the Month to publish here at Gigantea the first Friday of every month.