sea otter behavior

The Sea Otter's Diet
Sleeping Beauty

The Sea Otter's Diet:
Sea otters eat a huge variety of foods (mainly shellfish), from clabs and mussels to sea snails and starfish. Sea otters (males reach up to 65 pounds, females 45) are very high maintanance animals, and eat up to a quarter of their body weight every day.

Sea otters dive deep to find their food - they can dive as deep as 180 feet if necessary, and can stay under water for an average of one minute (the longest amount of time that an otter has spent underwater that has been recorded is four minutes). Sea otters are often followed by comerants underwater and seagulls above water, all hoping for a spare bit of the sea otter's meal.

The otters also have powerful tools for eating - sharp canine teeth for chewing and tearing, and flat molars for crushing shells. In fact, sea otters are one of the few mammals of the world known to use tools: if a sea otter cannot open a shell with its teeth, it will either smash it against a boulder or pry it open with a stray rock.

Also, the sea otter is extremely important to its habitat's ecosystem. One of the otter's favorite foods is urchins. Urchins, who live off of the kelp beds that the otters live in, could eat up an entire forest of kelp quite rapidly if there weren't any otters to keep their population lower - ever seen a dead kelp forest? Not a pretty picture...so otters are more than just a pretty face!

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Sleeping Beauty:

Anyone who's watched a sea otter sleep has had the chance to watch something extremely cute and detailed - if they are patient. Most people, in aquariums or zoos, see the sleeping otters, think This is boring, and head off into another exhibit.

But watching them sleep can be extremely entertaining. In the wild, sea otters wrap themselves in kelp to keep themselves from floating off while they nap - so in captivity, otters with sometimes "hold hands" by hooking paws together with each other, acting as anchors. Also, when sleeping in daylight, wild otters are known to place their paws over their eyes to keep out sunlight! Can we say, "Awwwwww"?



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