Oh hey, it's a lone air pod under the bench at a bus stop. Alleyward back with fresh horrors for you. Let's not get ahead of ourselves though, but straight up, if kids are listening with you, think about high tailing it right now to Asmologies episode. Instead, they're in the main podcast feed. They're up at alleyward dot com slash Smologies, which is linked in the show notes. Smologies are short and classroom safe. This one is not. It is not.
Are we good? Good? Okay, let's get to otters. First off, thank you listener Isaiah Nubins, who suggested this guest, in particular after hearing a review I read from a Wix from the Urology episode and a Wix dreamed that Loutrology was an episode. And your dreams are coming true right now, all of our dreams. Also, thank you just to everyone for leaving and writing reviews. They matter so much. I
read every single one. And this week we hit a really big lifelong goal of mine because of your reviews and subscribing, and Ologies was the number one science podcasts on Apple. It's been five years we hit number one. People. Let's do some air horns and a tiny imperceptible butt dance. Good job, huge giant goal. I can't believe it. Thank you so much. Thanks also to everyone on patreon dot com slash ologies for supporting the show. Each week, though for reviews I pick a fresh one to prove that
I see them all. And this week thank you to Shermworm, who wrote come for the science facts, stay for the fields. And also thank you future ologist Mackenzie King, who described the show as a massage to my brain while drinking espresso. Okay, get into it. Liutrology it's a word. It's been cited
in the literature one time, but that counts. JC von Voppelklein, a prominent scholar of crustaceans, coined it while describing a study about sea otters that was so well written it was an interesting read quote even for the non lutrinologist. So lutriside note comes from a mix of old old words for water, hence otter water water and then the hill they think was maybe picked up from lupis like
a water wolf or ludo meaning to play. It's anyone's guess, but otters are in the same mustulant family as weasels and wolverines and minx and also badgers, and they are full of must and musk and mischief. And you're about to get absolutely destroyed by otter facts. Your small talk will never recover. Otters will be all you think about for the remainder of your life. Also with that, I have to issue a trigger and a content warning without
spoiling too much. Otters are not not violent, and many of their behaviors would result in criminal charges if water weasels had a justice system. But in other ways they're better at relationships than we are now. This otter expert studied environmental systems for undergrad and got his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and is now doing a postdoc at the University of Washington in connection with the American Museum of Natural History and the
University of Texas. So buckle up, boy, howdie hot damn get ready for coastal versus inland otters. Skull morphology that tricks our brains, teeth, fur beach pastries, rock pockets, the perils of selfless motherhood, kelp naps, the nostalgia of otter droppings, molar crunching, and of course, outter handholding. With scientists and certified otter expert lutrinologist, doctor Chris Law.
My name is Chris Law and.
I go by him cool and doctor correct.
Yes, doctor Law.
We had a suggestion for this ology a few weeks ago. Someone had a dream also that there was an Otters episode and they woke up and looked for it, and then they realized that they just drumed it up. And so that is why we hustled to find you, because someone had a need for an Otter episode. So can you tell me how you came to be a weasel wizard?
Yeah, So I essentially started my guest science career with polycate worms during my undergrad at UC San Diego.
These are bristly segmented marine worms, which are almost as cute as otters if you're into worms.
And then as I was applying grad school, I met with my future pachy advisor, Rita Meta at UC Santa Cruz and we're just chatting about potential research projects. And she studies more at EELS, So I was just assuming I was going to be working on some fish project, which is fine because that was my plan to go
off the food chain. But then we were just chatting a little bit, and she just brought up the idea, why don't you work on sea otters because we're in Santa Cruz and they're just all over the place, And obviously I was like, ah, yeah, of course.
So Chris has lived up and down the sunny Pacific coast in San Diego and Santa Cruz and Orange County and like nearly every California and he was familiar with sea otters, so the suggestion to work on them was like, Hell, yes, jackpot Jack Potter.
I've seen them before, and like, there are adorable little teddy bears that you just want to hug, and who doesn't want to work on them? So like the moment she said that, kind of just jumped on that bandwagon and started doing some research into what potential projects I could could do. And since they eat all these hard shell preaetoms, one of the questions we really wanted to look at is just how are they actually breaking into those hard items? So kind of just got started on that.
So basically in undergrad I come from like a phylogenetics background and evolutionary background, so I'm kind of halfway through working with sea otters or starting to look into sea otters. I just got this idea, I have to build a phylogenic tree of all of the not only otters, but
the weasels, martins, wolverine, all those guys. So I just started building that phylogenic tree and then just learning a bunch of natural history by reading about this group, Like I have first daven know that weasels were related to otters, So learned more about weasels and kind of went this down this rabbit hole to want to study why they so elongate.
Yeah, they are like the docxins of the sea. Why are they so long and squiggly?
The idea is that it came around fifteen or so million years ago. That's during the mid mass seeing client transition, when temperatures drastically decreased and this expansion of grasslands occurred, which then led to diversification of rodents. So then this body elongation is hypothesized to have allowed those weasel like creatures to go underground to chase all those rodents in these tight crevices and whatnot.
Wow, I had no idea that that is why bodies were long. I mean, is that what doc sins are doing? Aren't they kind of like rodent hol dwellers.
Yeah, so that's the idea between or behind their kind of artificial selection, right where people really are trying to breathe these elongate looking dogs so they can go in these tight crevices or burrows to try to get those rodents. And during hunting.
Are they are they just chock full of vertebrate? Do they have more vertebrae or do they just have longer vertebrae than other animals.
That is a fascinating question. So like if you think of snakes or eels, they become more elongate by just simply adding more vertebrae, which makes sense right, But then with mammals, we're actually constrained to the number of vertebrate that we have. So in carnivorans, which like dogs, bears, cats, they have about twenty thoracic lumbar vertebrate and that number rarely rarely changes, So it can't become elongate by just
adding additional vertebrate. They have to actually evolve relatively longer vertebrae.
I was always wondering that about like my short ish poodle dog versus a docksen or like a weasel, those long, almost wormy bodies just have longer backbones each individually.
Yeah, exactly, so they have the exact same number vertebrae. It's just some of those breeds might have relatively longer ones, although no one, I don't think anybody has really looked into that. So it would be really interesting to see the skeletal elements of what actually contributes to those different body plans in these different breeds.
So yes, every time you see a dog that you would like to pet, know that it has thirty main vertebrae and then between five to twenty three bonus tailbones. And Corgeese side note, they're born with tails. Did you know that big bushy foxtails google It same with Australian shepherds and other herding dogs. But they tend to get the chop by breeders because when they were actually used
for hurting, no one wanted a stumped on tail. And I read one twenty eighteen study titled C seven vertebra homoaotic transformation in Domestic Dogs are Pug dogs breaking mammalian evolutionary constraints which found that twenty five percent of pugs have one fewer vertebra than all other breeds. And I like to think that there's some b robed man in the sky and God took a vertebra from a snorting, farting pug dog and made humans with it. Now, how
many do you have? Well, you were probably born with thirty three, but you now have around twenty four. What happened, Dad? I think you ate the bones. Nope, they just kind of fused together at the bottom like a bag of raisinetes you left in a hot car, only it's your sacral spine and your coccyx. For more on this, see the Osteology episode. But enough about us, let's talk about gazing in wonder at otters.
Now.
Chris also happens to make really gorgeous science art charting the evolution of these mammals in this beautiful, colorful detail. And where in the tree of life are they? Because I feel like I think of an otter and it seems like a cat, an aquatic cat, but also kind of like an upside down dog. What's happening?
Yeah, So it's in the order Carnivora, and Carnivora's split into two different main grooves, the philiforms, which are like your cats, and then the other group are the caniforms, which are your dogs, bears, pinnipedes, and the mustelodes, which
are the raccoons, weasels, skunks, orders, all those guys. So basically in the caniforms it goes dogs, bears, pinnipeds, then skunks, the red panda, raccoons, and then the mastellids, which includes that really species rich group that includes the otters, the weasels, the wolverine, the martins, the honey badger, the European badger. There's like over sixty species in mastella day.
Do you dream about this stuff? Because I know you make art about phylogenetic trees, does your brain is it always trying to kind of construct visuals of this?
Yeah, I mean that's why I love like learning how to make phylogenic trees. That I think it's just such a cool way to just like showcase the evolutionary history of like physically the tree of life, and with the carnivorence in general, Like it's such a diverse group and like so many different types of body plans and different sizes and shape, So it's really cool to be able to visualize all that and like how this one species
came from this group of species. Or how these two closely related species are from the same part of tree but then looks so very different. So yeah, that's part of the fun parts of being an evolutionary biologist.
Are you an organized person in general?
I pretend to be. It comes and goes.
Now, question what is it like to be an autorologist? Do you get to touch them? Do you get to hold them? Do you get to pet their fur? Do you get to touch a hell? Do you get to hold her hand? Do they give you clams? What is your life like?
Oh? I mean, I wish I could do all of that. The closest I've done is touched one. It is honestly the softest thing, at least a see honor. It's the
softest thing I've ever felt. I totally understood or understand why people back in the day really wanted to hunt them just because that pelt like you just want to rub your face on them because it's just so soft, and I'm sure it's also pretty warm in terms of doing all the other stuff, in terms of like wanting to hold their hands, I don't think I would ever want to do that with the wild otter because they will try to eat your face or like bite your face if they could. They're pure evil.
They are pure evil, says doctor Chris Law, a professional lucronologist. You knew this was coming, didn't you. Okay, I'm glad to be jumped right into that because I feel like somehow I became informed a few years ago that otters the cutest things ever, also absolute bastards, evil sexual predators. They will steal your stuff and sell it at a pawnshop like they're the worst. Give us a dark side. How fucked up our otters?
Oh? I mean yeah, so basically everything you said is true. So probably the worst thing is that they can also be dog killers. So apparently there are a couple incidents where somebody's dog was just like barking at one of the one of these otters along like the dock or something, and I guess that order just got fed up, went up to it and just apparently dragged it down, and I believe it might have drowned it. But again, this is just through word of mouth, so who knows.
Okay, It's September twenty twenty one. Hurricane Ida is ruining lives. The pandemic rages on via the delta variant and squid game premieres. Yes, folks, that was less than a year ago. But meanwhile, in Alaska, otters are terrorizing Anchorage citizens, literally chasing and sinking teeth into a nine year old boy. And this is not the first time. According to one news source quote, officials are currently investigating whether the incidents
all involve the same group of otters. And it's not just in the last Frontier, it's also in the Sunshine State.
Cell phone video of a charging otter.
This is a picture of the alleged otter sent to us by Greg Butler.
Butler says the otter attacked his.
Dog, Chester. Chester was bitten on the nose after an otter charged through his screened in porch. Two of his human neighbors were bitten on their heels and hands.
This otter comes flying out of the lake, just starts to chase my bike.
Actually just one right after my bike. So, while rare, these incidents are not isolated, and in communities all over the globe, Fearful locals demand of officials, you orter get that outter out of her.
I've heard this a couple of times, and this has happened a couple of times, so it's kind of gnarly.
I mean, how big are they? Because I feel like river otters are bigger, right, how big is sea otter like? And also what's the difference between river otter and a sea otter?
Oh so, actually a is much bigger than a North American river otter, but in California they don't get that big. Those are more Alaskan otters, but they are still much bigger than a little river otter.
And just to back up a little bit, there are thirteen species of otter globally. The US has two species, the little river otter, about the same weight as a pug, and then the sea otters, which off California can be up to ninety pounds like a rottweiler, although the beefy or Alaskan variety can top one hundred. Libbies think like
a Bernese mountain dog floating around gnawing on a crap. Now, they're also Eurasian otters about twenty pounds docks and size, and some medium size African otters, South American giant river otters, which are somewhere between an American river otter and a sea otter in size. And then there's the teeny Chihuahua sized Asian otters, but yes, in the US, I was surprised that the river otters were smaller and that the
sea otters were these hefty, clam eating sea beasts. They're big and they're not cuddly.
Definitely can be pretty vicious if you get too close to them.
How did some evolve to hang out in freshwater and others seawater or does it even matter because it's their breathing air.
Right, I'm amazed.
We don't want have fins and gulls.
Yeah, So, actually, all other otters are primarily freshwater. So it's the sea otter that's unique. It's that odd ball that evolved from all the other otters like about eight to ten million years ago, and it went on basically its own evolutionary trajectory. So everything it does, everything about their physiology is very different compared to other river otters.
And sea otters are primarily just found in the ocean, whereas river otters, especially like North American river otters and Eurasian otters, will actually go into the marine environment as well, so you can find you can be in locations like in Washington where there will be both river otters and sea otters.
Oh, where are they sleeping? Did they go home at night?
Sea otters?
Either one like, do they sleep in the water or do they have like a cave that they hang out in on shore?
Yeah? So so river otters have dens that they hang out. I've never actually seen one, but yeah, I'm presumably along the shore. But then sea otters actually just float in the water, and I'm sure you heard stories of where they can wrap themselves in some kelp so they don't float away and they can take a nap that way.
They're relatively small marine mammals. They burn a lot of heat, so they have to sleep a lot to refuel, and you always see them like just taking this newze to to conserve some energy.
Do you think they hold hands in the wild or is that just a publicity video firm a zoo?
So I don't I actually don't know, because I remember giving a presentation at this I think conference and I had an image of that, you know, that image of two sars holding hands that was taken at one of the aquariums. Somebody gave me shit for it without correctly doing that because she said that they don't hold hands in the wild. But then apparently a couple weeks or months later, there's like some photos of wild hotters holding hands.
So I don't know.
So they have a good pr team. They're like, listen, TMZ's around the corner. We're going to have to do something. Also shout out to otter paparazzi Drew Wharton, the founder of ceotters dot com, who in twenty sixteen captured the first photo of otters doing this in the wild, like a celebrity couple holding hands walking into nobood to eat a bunch of raw seafood. Also, ceotters dot com has live sea otter camps if you would like to stare
at them with like minded people over the internet. What is the autology community?
Like?
Are people really focused on conservation? Are they trying to figure out how to increase populations?
Like?
Is there a big conservation effort around?
Oh yeah, there's a huge effort out all the major aquariums, so like the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, the Seattle
a Quarium in Washington. I'm sure up in BC and Alaska also has great efforts, but the one I'm most familiar with are the ones down in Central Coast California where the Monorway Bear Quarium U see Standa Cruz, the US Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife basically all of these organizations they do all of this great outreach work and also a lot of work with the wild populations to make sure that the population is doing well, that individuals are healthy, and that you know, all the possible things
that could affect them are looked into.
How is their population like the sea otters, for example, I feel like people are really rallying for the sea otters, like how is their population, Like is it rebounding at all? Because we just did an episode on urchins and they were like, urchins are everywhere because sea otters are not.
Yeah, uh so, I guess it's very different depending on what population of sea otters you're talking about. So that helped to urchin. The sea otter system is really describing the Alaskan populations pretty well, so that classic killer will is eating the sea otters, which then increases urchins, which then decreases helpforest. But then in California the system's a little bit different where the sea otter population is actually doing relatively stable. So I think there's about maybe three
thousand individuals in coastal California. I could be wrong on that. I have to check my numbers's right, but basically the idea is that they are kind of constrained between like point consumption down south and Half Moon Bay up north.
And the reason why they can't expand because they're being attacked by sharks up north, and I guess fishermen are pushing them back up from the south, so they can't really expand, and that why there's they're more like this carrying capacity where they're running out of food and that auto population can't really increase because of that.
So in California, they're stuck between a net and a shark place. And sea otters have been protected since the nineteen eleven International fur Seal Treaty after colonization of North America led to a dangerous decline. And I looked into it and yep, there's about three thousand sea otters off the coast of the Pacific in California, and then ninety percent of the world sea otters are off the coast of Alaska. There's about twenty five thousand of them there. Now,
what about the river otters. It's estimated about one hundred thousand of North American river otters exist in the US and Canada. According to the banger of a paper, river otter status management and distribution in the United States evidence of large scale population increase and range expansion. So that's good. And of the world's thirteen species, eight are threatened, including the Asian small clawed otter and the smooth coated otter, and one called the hairy nosed otter, which sounds cute
but it might be ferocious. All of these otters are like, we got a more ods. Also, I'm gonna warn you right now this next part contains scenarios and language that might be literally triggering to victims of violence. Fucking otters, dude otters, fucking dude sex lives of otters. What's going on? How are they making more ods? Is it a horror show?
It basically is very It's basically just yeah.
That's what I heard. That's what I heard. Yeah, it's not great people. And I'm bleeping out a word that starts with R that means sexual assault. I know it can be hard for survivors to hear. So I'm just airing on the side of bleeping otters.
So so females have it rough because basically the moment they become sexually mature, they are either pregnant or have a baby with them or a pup with them, until they literally exhaust to themselves to death. And it's called end lactation syndrome for the females where they just basically just die because they're just so exact it from you know, putting so much energy towards their pups or towards milk production,
and they also have to ford for their puffs. And I'll say one thing, some of those pups are basically just like little parasites. I remember just watching a mom and a pup interact, and this pup is almost bigger than the mom, and it was still hanging out with mom, and the moment mom goes diving, the pup just like hangs out on the surface being all cute and happy. But then when the mom comes up with food, it just immediately swims to the mom and just starts, like
you know, crying and begging for food. And again this pup is almost bigger than a mom. Basically, pups usually stay with the mom for six months to up to a year, and it's those usually those slackers that are staying up for a year, are usually just as big as a mom, still continually getting food from it.
How did evolution allow for that? How can they stay that, these poor ladies? And what are all the bachelors doing? Are they roving in packs of otters? Are there like packs of bachelor river otter? Is just terrorizing?
Uh so? So yeah, the evolution question, I think it's just because that pup will be like nice and fat and ready to kind of go hunt on its own, because if it gets weaned too early or it leaves mom too early, it's not going to be able to eat or get enough food, and it's just gonna die. And in that case, you're just gonna lose your you know,
offspring and your genetic potential. Right if that happens so evolutionarily, you know, there might be that reason for why why that pup really wants to extract all the nutrients from the mom before it can go off on its own and do its thing. No, no, no, no, I live with my mom.
Oh yeah, you hungry herm we get some loud.
Yeah. And in terms of the males, oh yeah, those guys don't do anything once. Basically the males are constantly circling females because once that pup leaves, it's gonna go you know, reproduced to pass off its genes. And then once that happens, I mean, it's a terrifying show that I mean, I'm happy to describe it, but you.
Know, give us the dirt one thousand content and trigger warnings.
So normally, once once that female is free, the male would get on it and then essentially where the male will bite onto the female's nose. So often you'll see females with ripped noses and you can easily tell out the female just because it's biting down on that nose and basically forcing itself on it to you know, facets, facets genes.
Oh my god.
So once that happens, the male just leaves and you'll probably never see the female ever again.
Oh, I like want to file for restraining orders on behalf of female otters, Like this is not okay, Yeah, it's not okay. Do they have any defenses, like do they have thicker fur or do they have like an extra claw anywhere or like mace?
I don't think so. And yeah, and also the females are much smaller than the male, so they're kind of defense less in that regard.
Oh my god, I want them to evolve a pepper spray land. That's horrible, horrible. I want them to go on strike and live in their own happy island. Me like, get your own urchin.
I know, if only they could otherwise. Yeah, Like I said, basically that's the female life. And they do this for maybe like twelve fifteen years at the most in the wild, where basically they just get pregnant a couple times or like a lot of times during their lifetime and just reproduce and have pups and cycle just continues over and over again until they die from exhaustion. It's pretty nuts.
Oh what about in captivity? We have no right obviously to enforce any of our like assumed ethics sexual ethics on otters. But in captivity, are they like, hey, dude, not at all? Or do they just have to let nature be terrible?
No? So, usually in captivity all the odds that you might see in aquariums are all females because a lot of these bigger aquariums they actually use them as surrogates
for wild otters that might be orphaned. So like if the mom and wild dies there's usually this pup that's worn and alone, and since they're threatened, at least in California, there's been a program to basically take these otters in, especially their females, still have the surrogates raise them until they can re release them in a wild when they're old enough.
Do they do that in the wild, Do they like penguins, do they adopt orphaned otters in the wild or is that kind of unique to captivity that's usually.
Unique to captivity. I don't think I've ever heard in any situation where a wild female would take in another stray pup. And usually if the stray pup is alone, it's not going to even survive for that long because it's basically defenseless and helpless, can't even go catch its
own food by itself, so it'll just die. So so yeah, that's why, you know, like the Honorary Bery Queerreum really relies on stranding networks or like volunteers or people just you know, observing or seeing a wild otter by it like a little pup, somebody will call it in and they'll send out a team to bring it in. If they can't look at their mom or something like.
That, and I mean, they're so cute. But now I'm like a little mad at the pups too. But why are they so cute? From a morphological as someone who's studied their bone structure and how long noodle they are? How and why are they so cute?
That's a great question. I don't know why they are so cute, but how it's because their skulls are very flat faces. So if you look at a basically a newborn Sears skull, it doesn't have that snout pronounced snout yet, so it's very like a puppy dog face or like even like a newborn baby space and which I guess in our brains it's hardwired to, you know, want to like take it and hold it and protect it and all that.
This side note is called baby schema, and it's when a juvenile organism has a large head and a round face and big eyes and smaller other features like ears and snout and mouth and fun fact, Mickey Mouse has aged in reverse, his features have grown more, maybe like with each decade. And when adults retain some cute characteristics, our brains get confused and say, protect them at all costs, even if they are ghoules like your tiny racist grandma or a seat otter.
But in terms of why they might be like that in the wild, I have no idea, Like what what kind of selective advantage that is? Maybe other other animals think it's cute, or maybe they're moth or in other otter in individuals might might have some kind of selective pressure on it. But I have no idea.
I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to get a PhD in otters. They're so cute because their babies are such assholes that you would literally not feed them if they weren't so cute?
Uh?
Can I ask you some questions from listeners who know that you're coming on the show. Yeah, okay, we're just gonna lightning around. We're gonna see how many we can get through. Is that cool?
Yep? Sounds great.
But before we crack into your questions, we're going to toss some coins into an ocean of need and Chris chose c Otter Savvy, which increases awareness of protecting s otters and encourages responsible viewing guidelines and for more about what they do and check out volunteer opportunities see c ottersavvy dot org and savvy has two v's and not two a's, and I always mess it up, but yes.
A donation went to c ottersavy dot org thanks to sponsors. Okay, your questions, the first being from an actual patron of the show. Okay, first question from a very important listener named Larry Ward, also known as a grand pod around here. It's my dad. He wanted to know they eat kelp or they just living That's a good question. I don't know. Do they eat kelp or do they just live in the kelp?
Yeah, so otters don't eat the kelp, they just live in it. So they'll use it and wrap it, wrap themselves in it to you know, stay in one place if they're sleeping. But they really rely on it indirectly, just because it's such an important ecosystem in California where all they're basically invertebrate prey that they're eating, live off it or live under it or live on it. So it is really essential to them indirectly.
Ah, So it's like their apartment and the grocery store all at once exactly.
Yeah, And yeah, they rarely leave it just because it's a nice protected area. So it's harder for predators to find them.
Nice are they meat eaters? Only? They are carnivores, right, They typically just exist on just sushi buffet.
Yep. They essentially eat your favorite types of seafood. So you got your snails, your clams, your muscles, your avalony or crabs and urchins. They also eat these kind of gross looking things called fat innkeeper worms.
I don't know if you yes, I have. They look like dicks, they look like disembodied, horrible fluby dildos. Listen, okay, listen. These worms are also called penis fish, and I'm a fan of a phallus, trust me on that. But you have to imagine them just poking up like whack a moles in the mud, just like slop slop slupp going and when it's time to go potty, fat innkeeper worms squirt a steady liquid stream out of one end, and
sometimes beaches are littered with these flaccid worms. They're beached by the thousands, like the most surreal dumb truck accident you've ever seen. But they're also a delicacy and they're considered an aphrodiji And like most things, it's really just set and setting. They're not as picturesque as maybe you would want them to be. But yeah, so fat innkeeper worms is what they're called.
Yeah, so they'll eat those as well, But most of their prey are usually hard shell pray because they contain more calories.
A ha, okay, that brings us to a question that everybody asked. Jamie McNeil, Jaco's first time question asker, Francesca Huggins, Lenny Oslith, Jesse Herlbort, Alicia Henning, Emma Shortwood, Mariah McGregor. Everyone wanted to know, in Jaco's words, is there a commonality between otter's favorite rocks?
Like?
Do most otters use one particular kind of rock? Do they have a favorite rock? Jamie mcdeal wants to know, how do they pick? A lot of people need to know what's up with their rocks.
So that is a myth. They do not have a favorite rock?
What now? Flam flam busted? What? Wow? Okay?
So often these rocks are pretty big, and they do I have like a little I guess you could call it a pocket, but it's just a flap of skin that they can keep praying. But these rocks are usually too big to do that. So normally what they do is that they come up with the rock and they're prey. They put the rock on their belly, use it as an anvil and break things, eat the things, and they keep doing that and basically when they're done with the rock, they just do a little turn, the rock falls down,
and then they go on with their lives. Wow, so they don't really have that favorite rock. I mean, they might reuse the rock if it's the only rock that's available, because they are just right there and just decide to go back down to get more food and that rock happens to be there, so they might pick it up again to use it, but they're definitely not traveling around with it.
That's hilarious. I completely thought like they had a fanny pack and they're like, where's my good rock? Not this rock? What about? You know, from like a philosophical perspective, is that tool use or is it only a tool if you use the rock to smash the clams and not the clams to smash on the you know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean no, we call it. We still call it as a tool used because it is still you know, you're still putting an object onto your stomach and then actually using it as as a tool essentially to break something open. And I'll say that otters can also use other objects as tools. So sometimes they'll use another shell to break open in their shell, they'll use like bottles. They'll even use like docks in people's boats, which we like to break things open. So they will use anything.
Now from using tools to being tools. I'm sorry, Daniel Schmanuel wants to know about their as long as we're just we're going to go back to them being terrible. Are the observations of sea otters assaulting sexually and killing baby seals? Are those common or is that exaggerated?
I don't know how common it is, but it definitely is to a point where there's multiple observations of them doing that. So the way male's territories work is that the dominant mails have territories that you know, exclo other males from their territories, right, And in that kind of competition, there's always going to be losers and they're excluded from these territories. So if they can't have their own territory to mate with females, they just get I guess frustrated
and find the little baby seal to do. It's you know, to basically bit, I guess, and that's usually doesn't end well with the seal.
Wow. Sometimes it doesn't end well even for the otters. And according to a hellscape of a study titled Patterns of Mortality in Southern sea Otters, about eleven percent of dearly departed sea otters spotted by researchers died by mating trauma eleven percent. And the violence is not just male to female within same species. Boy bottles sea otters can also hit below the proverbial anthropomorphized beltline.
One thing that's crazy about these male to male conflicts is that when they fight each other, they essentially go after each other's vaculums, which in carnivorans, there's a Carnivorans have a bone called vaculum in their penis, so they go after each each other's vaculum to try to break it. Oh, it's pretty brutal out there.
How did they learn how to be such assholes? Are most like North American mammals. Are most animals this ferocious, And we're just surprised because they're pretty adorable.
Honestly, I have no idea how that compares to other mammals groups. One of the nice things about sea otters is that they have to come to the surface and they just float. So it's just so easy to get these observations because they're also really close to shore, so like we're aboare to get these detailed information, whereas like other smaller animals, like even river otters, it's really hard to spot them and actually see what they're doing in
the wild. In the wild, so who knows what they're doing out there?
Weird lucky stuff. You know what's funny is I just looked at Emma Sherwood asked. I learned on a high school field trip to the zoo that mail orders break each other's dicks to reduce competition. Is this true?
Oh?
There you go, Emma Sherwood knows what's up. Yeah. Kathleen Sachs wants to know. Can a troop of dedicated river otters really kill an alligator or a crocodile? Is that flim flam?
So there's these things called giant river otters in South America and the Amazon, and these things are a little bit longer than the sea otters. And if you ever see pictures of these ones. They are so weird looking. They are another older lineage of otters that kind of offshoot from other otters, like ten million years ago or so. But they got really like buggy eyes and they got their their faces just like at like like an alien otter.
But these guys are huge, and they actually are in family units, and they will actually go after sometimes go after like Cayman's. And there are even reports of them like fighting off jaguars no, which is pretty and crazy.
For more on that, join the four point two million other humans who have watched a YouTube video titled Giant Otter bite jaguar Head seriously injured for daring to attack its comrades, uploaded by user Wildlife Today, and this and the other like fourteen videos I subsequently watched taught me that a brawl with giant river otters sounds a lot
like the worst game of Marco Polo. Why well, according to the paper Airborne vocal communication in adult neotropical otters, these creatures have like a menu of sounds they make to chit chat, from a ha it's like their own personal siren, to infant babbling, and something called a hum gradation that means yo bear left go left. We're going left to direct the group. And yes, some otters have more friends than us, but let's try to forget that fact.
I mean, well, yeah, the advantage for those guys is that they are in a group setting, so they have kind of each other's back to try to, you know, fight off predators that might try to attack their young Dang.
I do not want to be on the wrong side of an otter vendetta. Ever, I will have my vengeance, you know what, Let's try to steer this towards the positives again. Okay, life is such a bummer. It's such a bummer, but it's imperative. We find the good and we grasp it and we clutch at it like a booi in the cold, roiling sea, and we hug the booy hug the good. What about playfulness and cuteness? Anna Thompson, Maury Pelte, Nicole Kleinman, Michelle Tang, Becky the Sassy Seagrass,
Scientist Pierce Franklin. They all want to know how cute does it get? Pierce wants to know, what's the cutest thing you've ever seen an otter do?
The cutest thing I've ever seen is probably just like a little baby sea otter pup that's just floating by itself, waiting for its mom. I mean, I know I told you about how just waiting for mom to bring up dinner essentially, but before that, it's just floating by itself like a little cork, closed eyes all fluffy and like, just look at me, I'm so adorable. Like it's got like ten photographers just around, like along the coast or coast trying to take up its picture, including me, Like
it's adorable. Probably the most playful time I've seen otters. Actually river otters, they actually play so like they will swim next to each other or like go up and down or just run all over the place. So I've seen that in river otters, but I've never really seen that sea otters.
Ronan, Taylor, Ann and Kate Tim's all want to know why do they love ice so much? In Kate's words, and Roda wants to know do they get cold? Roda says, we have otters in our local river in Scotland and it's magical when you see them, but oh boy, it gets so chilly. How do they stay cold in an icy river?
Yeah? So sea otters have the densest fur I think of all mammals, so basically, sea otters have no fat on them whatsoever. That are really relying on that dense fur, and it does keep them warm, super warm, So that's why they're able to tolerate living in all these freezing frigid environments just fine. And I would imagine river otters also have similarly dense furs, so that's why they're able to live like Scotland and all these other cold places and play in the snow.
That's right.
Sea otters, unlike most marine mammals, do not have layers of blubber. This was news to me, and this is also why their fur is so soft, up to illustrous one hundred and sixty five thousand hairs per square centimeter. Eurasian river otters about seventy thousand hairs per square centimeter. What about us, a species that has fewer friends than otters, Well, we only have one hundred and twenty four to two
hundred hairs per square centimeter. Talking about the business end of one, Francesca Huggins, Miranda Panda, Claire Johnson, and specs Awl all would love to talk about their poop and several people wanted to know what they smell like. Francesca asked, I heard that otter poop smells like violets. What in the otter shit? Is this true? Why? Clara says that they went to the zoo and the guide said that otter poop is noteworthy, but then said nothing else. So what is noteworthy about otter poop?
I definitely have never heard otter poop being described as violets. I have never smelled I've never smelled otter poop, but I would imagine it smells like the worst shit you could ever smell, because they're eating seafood, like a seafood, and that doesn't smell good. So I don't think I ever wanted to smell it, but I've never smelled it, But I would imagine it smelling the worst thing you.
Could smell, Right, That's what I would think. Also, you know, we had a scatologist on who works at the Chicago Zoo and just has like thirteen freezers full of different zoo animal shit, so I may have to ask her, But first I asked the Internet about the smell of an otter turd, which is known scientifically as a sprint, and it can be accompanied by a musky glop known
as anal jelly. And Ian Craft of the website Total Ecology writes, when fresh spray emits a distinct sweet odor that is not at all unpleasant, and our friend Tias Williams aka Science with Tyas on Twitter said it's similar to the odorous, sleep hungent waft of dog poop, but least with the fishiness of their marine diet. And doctor Danny Ravioti, author of the best selling book Does It Fart,
told me it's acrid and fishy. Quote like a tin of anchovies and oil were left in the sun for four days and then a bunch of musky man perfume was sprayed on top of it. I also saw that Twitter user Forrester Sahita described the smell as similar to jasmine tea. Others said herrings in an ash tray, freshly mown hay lavender, but no one's first hand account topped that of Jim Manthorpe, who penned the BBC op ed quote The Delicious Scent of Otter Poo, which contains this
journey of a paragraph. Otter sprint is one of the least defensive smells in the world of excrement. It has a slightly fishy punch and odor. It is a delight. Whenever I see it, I plant my knees in the grass, lean over, and draw its delicious smell into my lungs okay, Jim. I needed fact, though not opinion, so I reached out to scatology guest Rachel Santomoor aka Doctor Pooh, and she
responded with alacrity. Bless her writing me quote. Otters live in and around water, so they eat fish, among other aquatic and non aquatic species, so otter poo can be quite smelly. After reading the delicious scent of Otter Pooh, she writes, it seems to me that Otter Pooh reminds the author of the sea. Think about when you go to the ocean and it smells a little fishy and salty.
It smells like the ocean, a place where you want to be, a place that reminds you of summer vacation, sand castles, body surfing, being with your family and relax, she writes. She continues, so even though otter Pooh is smelly, it reminds the author of something they like and where they want to be. So y'all, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Find your joy, cut bangs, text your crush,
sniff on a sprint. Now, what do you do if you would like to use different holes in your face to experience and otter any tips on seeing them rather than sniffing? Well, Patrons Kate Alward, Sheila zinc, Kelly Salmon, Winny's Witch, and Miranda Panda all desperately wanted otter spotter tips. What about some of the field work that you have gotten to do. And there are several folks and I'll listen to and aside who want to know if you
have any tips for spotting them in the wild. Do you get to get out there with like, you know, fleece and down vests and binoculars and get out there to look for them?
Yeah, so I've done that a couple of times. I was primarily trying to film their toolsing behavior so we
could try to quantify the kinematics behind it. So, I mean, I call it it's not really I mean, I guess you could technically call it field work, but it's basically you go to the beach and you just have a little camping chair, set up the camera and just hang out there until you see an otter that's close enough to start filming or take photos of it, and like, it's California, so it's like, what a nice seventy sunny day,
can't complain? Yeah, so it's not. Yeah, yeah, it's obviously very rough field work.
Yeah, that sounds absolutely terrible. I hope we don't have like a sandwich or anything, or nice cold beverage like, oh, that's awful.
No. I usually I usually go with the chocolate croissant.
That sounds like the best thing ever. Becky the Seacrest Scientist again, you know, Becky wants to know is a group of otters really called a frolic? And if not, can you make that official? Is that real? Are they called a frolic?
I've never heard of that, but I like it. It makes sense.
Okay, well then good it's called that now.
Yeah, I just said if we all just start using that, it'll eventually catch on. I think.
Yeah, it's hereby known as a frolic. Horrible news. Again, I'm so sorry we jumped the gun here. It's already got a name, and it's not a frolic. A group of otters is called a romp on land in the water it's called a raft. And I searched for literally hours. Nowhere in the literature could I find any mention of them being called a frolic. Romp goes back to the fourteen hundreds when there was a tome called the Book of Saint Albans, and it listed plural nouns for different animals, including,
let's just do it. Let's list a couple, an embarrassment of pandas passel of possums, a conspiracy of lemurs, a committee of mongooses, a thunder of hippopotami, and many others, including a grumble of pugs, perhaps grouchy from having a vertebra stolen. But Nature writer Nicholas Lund has gone on record and reported, no, these terms are not white used scientifically, no matter how old they are. But romp is legit. It's established if you were to visit the Wikipedia page
list of animal names. I'm telling you right now, the lead image they have on the page is of a sea honor, so romp it is. Sorry, babies, Amelia Frank wants to know. I always hear on Nature shows about how vital it is that otter moms keep their babies dry, but then like they hold them on their bellies and there is inevitably some flipper or tail dropping the water. So do they have to keep them one hundred percent dry? Because that sounds anxiety provoking, Amelia says, should they not
get soaked? Can you get it? Can you get one wet? Or is it like a gremlin?
No, they're definitely waterproof. They can get wet. The reason why the mom is trying to dry it out, it's just to conserve heat. It's also cleaning the furs. So otters spend like a third of their life just cleaning, grooming just to make because they rely on that fur as that installation, they have to make sure that it's clean from all that dirt or debris or whatever, to make sure it's actually functioning so that it doesn't clump
up and expose its skin to the cold environment. So they really really want to get those puffs nice and clean. And usually it also happened to dry them out.
Okay, all right, so it's not it's definitely not like if a drop of water gets on this, it's you're screwed forever, right Okay?
Oh no, yeahs sears are born to be in the water.
So Courtney, kay wants to know if river otters actually have a communal toilet. Do they have like middens?
I think so, but don't quote me on that. What river otters do a lot, though, is that they'll mark territories, So they'll basically leave scent marks all over the place and they might go to the same location all the time just to make sure that that's, you know, the boundary of their territory. So maybe that is related to that.
The otter potties side note, are called latrines, and they are considered to be hangout destinations where dude otters catch up and exchange information, kind of like walking onto the set of Cheers, but instead of bruskies, it's poohoo. Also, speaking of chilling, I feel like this is an appropriate place to inform you that an otter's den is also called a couch, you know what. Let's talk teeth patrons. Jesseb Jesse, Hurlbert and even had questions. A few people
wanted to know about their teeth. Anna Zimmer says, I recently heard an otter chewing. I was tens of feet away across the water and could barely believe my ears. Tell me about their chompers.
So otters, or at least the otter teeth look very similar to ours. They're at least their molars. It's nice and big and flat, perfect just to crunch things. So often if you go to where sars are and you're really quiet, you can actually hear them crunching on that
hard shell and it's actually pretty amazing. And what's super cool about those the adaptations that is that they're enamel on their molars are actually fracture resistant, So they've evolved to basically be able to sustain all that all that fracture forces from the prey they're eating. Because if you imagine if you are trying to eat through clamshells, your teeth would get destroyed.
Oh you'd be so fu Yeah, your dentist would be like, thank you. What makes it fracture resistant? Do they have a ton of people in like DARPA trying to figure out otter teeth so they can make better weapons or something.
So I don't know about that, but there are definitely people that have looked at the material properties of those teeth, and I don't remember exactly what the kind of minerals they have, but they've done comparisons with like ancient humans that had much bigger jaws and bigger molars to crush those types of seeds as well, And it's very similar
morphologies and it's pretty pretty impressive. So it's like kind of through convergent evolution that these type of molars have have evolved to be a perfect teeth to crush things.
Mm hmm. For more on this, you can see the two thousand and nine paper enthusiastically titled the Remarkable Resilience of Teeth, which straight up compares the strength of a human molar to a sea otters and humans maximum load eighty seven pounds of bite force, but otters over one hundred more than a cheetah, almost as much as a wolf. But how do see otter molars not split while they're
chopping on clamshells? Oh, they do, they do split, But this paper said that they're molars and ours crack all the time in micro fissures and then proteins rush in to spackle them. But still don't eat rocks. On the topic of hardness, what about the hardest thing about your job, the hardest thing about being an outologist. There's got to be solo sucks.
But there's just so many things to learn about them, there's not enough time. So, like we know so much about sea otters, oh relatively, just because they're easier to study, But in terms of the other otters, especially the ones that are like in Asia or South America, those ones are very are much harder to study just because of their locations and because their population sizes. They're either shrinking
or we have no idea. Another otter species down in South America called the marine otter, and it looks like a river otter, but it actually lives in a marine environment too, and it actually eats a lot of hardshell prey too. But we have barely any idea of like what exactly it's doing, what it's population sizes, it it might not be doing well just because there's not a lot of work done on them, and just in these remote locations.
What do you love the most about them? What do you just fall in love with when it comes to doing this work.
It's just there's just such interesting animals. The fact that they have this integration between their tool using behavior, their morphology is just unique compared to other things. Like it's just interesting that they are able to gain access to these harder prey. One thing I didn't touch on is that in Monterey Bay, these otters actually exhibit dietary specialization. So some oters will only eat urchins, others won't only
eat clams, others won'tly eat crabs, and so on. So part of my research now is actually trying to investigate why that is or how they're actually able to eat these different type of prey. So how is it relating to the tool using behavior, and how is it relating back to their variation and their biting ability? So as in, are some orders just able to generate larger bite forces than other orders? So that's type of questions that we're hoping to be able to answer soon.
Is that regional little pockets or is it completely individual like one sister might be eating urchins while a brother's eating clams.
Yeah, so right now, that's I think primarily found just in California, And it goes back to that carrying capacity. So because that population is limited in terms of resources and food, instead of each individual being a journalist basically eat everything they can get, they just become super specialized and just become really good at eating a particular prey. So one individual will just become a really good urchin specialist and spousal. There's a certain way you have to
extract them, a certain way. You have to like open them and eat them, versus like an abalone specialist, which uses completely different behaviors in order to get the abalony and and eat it. So they just become these really highly specialized individuals that really are able to get access to these different prey items and do it so well that and efficiently, And that's just the way that they can increase that caloric income versus just becoming just a journalist and eat everything they see.
Yeah, that's so funny. It's absolutely me eating scrambled eggs for dinner like it's fine.
Yeah, I mean yeah, once you once you know how to do it, just go for it. Right, Well I learned something new. Yeah.
I love the idea of someone peeking through my windows being like, make a note she's having she's having scrambled eggs for dinner too.
Well, that's the thing with these otters that you know they're they're they're flipper tag so people can actually id them. And usually the Monitor Bay Aquarium has lots of volunteers to go out to observe these otters on a daily basis, so they're basically if you were out there, they would be tracking how many eggs did you use, how did you pretty salt, did you use a fork? How did
you cook your eggs? So essentially they're basically tracking all of that informations that are tracking how many prey ams they're eating, what kind of prey items, and estimate the size of those prey items where they use tools for that prey item. It's pretty nuts. Wow, it's pretty amazing data.
I bet the people who have to organize the volunteer staff at the Monterey bayquer Area they mis get so many folks who are like, if you need you need a volunteer to watch the auto, I'm available. I'm available. Like that's got to be a long list of.
Right, I mean, who doesn't want to spend a nice, nice morning hanging out by the coast and watching some sea otters eat their dinner or eat their breakfast.
I mean yeah, well, meanwhile, someone's watching you and being like doctor Laws having another chocolate croissant. We don't know why.
I mean, yeah, the artists could totally be just watch me back.
I hope they thank you. So so much for being on. This is a joy. Yeah, I hate orders more than I thought.
Yeah, thanks for definitely having me on.
So ask smart people shameless questions as always, and then just sit back and real and horror. You can follow doctor Chris Law on Twitter at Chris underscore j Underscore Law and you can enjoy orders from a distance. You can enjoy them online if you sniff a sprain, I'd like to hear about it. I don't know if I do want to. Actually, I do want to hear about it. I do want to hear about it. We're at ologies
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I'm putting a link in the show notes to it because he has a gorgeous, beautiful brain that strings together words so well. Hundred Poems by Jared Sleeper. I'm so thrilled about it, I literally could cry. If you listen to the end of the episode, you know I tell you a secret and this week. It's that we fought off COVID, so that's good. I'm still back in LA for a little bit since my dad was feeling stronger
and we were just hovering too much. In the last few weeks have maybe been the most anxiety I maybe have ever felt in my life. But we're taking it day by day. I've also taken a pickleball, and by that I mean I've played it one time and I liked it. It's kind of like outdoor ping pong, but on a small tennis court and with a whiffle ball,
and it makes a very satisfying thuax out. Also, my dear friend and a recent LA transplant, Cole and Perry from the Pantatology episode, has started a Northeast LA pickleball club. So I look forward to relishing my future opponent's defeats. Stay tuned for that. Okay, take care, be nice to each other.
Okay, I love you, Bye bye.
And what are we looking at?
You're looking at sea otters, six of them here. They go down to the bottom. They get a stone, and they go down to the bottom. They get a seashell and then they smash the shell with the stone. At that what's cooln't it