Sea otters are members of the weasel or mustelid family. That's more deaths in a year than have ever been recorded. Sea otter fur has about 1.6 to 2.6 million hairs per square cm, the thickest fur of any animal in the world. As top predators, sea otters are critical to maintaining the balance of nearshore ecosystems, such as kelp forests, embayments and estuaries.
In the modern day, sea otters have legal protections. Tracks/footprints: Otter prints can be found at the edge of river banks, in gravel, sand, and mud, and on tarmac if they have just left the river. They also have five toes – a distinctive sign that it’s an otter print. 6.
Their fur actually consists of two layers, an undercoat and longer guard hairs. The longest recorded sea otter dive was 4 minutes, 2 and the deepest recorded sea otter dive was 318 feet (97 m) deep. Sea otters eat 25 percent of their body weight each day in sea urchins, crabs, clams, snails and other invertebrates. Today there are an estimated 106,000 sea otters off various coastlines around the world. Sea otters have small front legs and stiff toes for handling food, while strong back legs with webbed feet allow for graceful paddling through the water. Many conservation efforts are also in place, including those that involve breeding the animals in captivity and bringing them back into their natural habitats at later times. Sea otters use rocks to crack open their prey as fast as 45 blows in 15 seconds. 1. Physiology. In most areas it is illegal to harm or to kill them due to the fact that they remain listed as an Endangered Species. One factor that in the past brought upon the endangered status of the species is hunting by human beings -- for purposes of acquiring their pelts. Because the mismatch gives them a clumsy walk on land, sea otters rarely stray too far from the sea. Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) Description. Sea otters are a keystone species, meaning their role in their environment has a greater effect than other species. 7.
By the time internation fur treaties were in place, there were less than 2,000 sea otters left. The modest increase comes despite the fact that a record 335 sea otters were found dead in 2011, many of them from shark bites. Human Interaction . Hunting. Spraints: In other words, otter droppings. In fact, at 850,000 to one million hairs per square inch, they have the thickest fur of any mammal. The Sea Otter was almost completely extinct by 1911 with less than 2,000 of them remaining. Sea otters are carnivores in the family Mustelidae—a group of animals that also includes terrestrial and semi-aquatic forms such as weasels, badgers, skunks, fishers, minks, and river otters.Sea otters are the only fully aquatic form of otters, but they share features with the others such as thick fur and short ears.
1. Like other members of this family, they have very thick fur. However, thanks to successful conservation efforts the numbers have continued to increase. 5. By this time there were only 1,000-2,000 sea otters left on Earth – they vanished from everywhere except the Aleutian Islands and California.