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1 Day Old Sea Otter Trying to Sleep on Mom

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Sea Otters


Sea otters are the  second smallest marine animals in North America.  They are carnivores, 

which means they eat other animals such as fish, frogs, and crabs.  They are members of the 

weasel family.  Otters do not have blubber. Instead, they have fur. Their fur helps keep them  

warm. 

	Sea otters can dive up to three hundred thirty feet when they are looking for food. They 

are one of the few mammals that use tools to open their food. In order for them to open a 

shellfish, they would use a rock or other sharp tool. Their prey are sea urchins, clams, mussels, 

and snails. Sea otters only  predators are great white sharks, orcas, seals, and sea lions. 

Sea Otters have pups yearly. They normally have one pup at a time. Occasionally, they 

can have twins.* Sea otters are the only animal known to have pups in the water. It takes up to 

six to eight months until an otter can be born. Even though there are about one hundred six 

thousand sea otters left, their numbers have been decreasing. There used to be over a million 

otters. Now, otters are endangered because they get hunted. People like to hunt them for their fur. 

	A female’s life span in the wild can range from fifteen to twenty yeras. A male otter’s life 

span in  the wild can range from ten to fifteen years. An adult male sea otter can weigh from 

forty nine pounds to ninety nine pounds.  An adult female can weigh from thirty one pounds to 

seventy three. 

Sea otters float on their backs to sleep. They often wrap kelp around themselves or hold 

hands to prevent them from floating away. Sea otters wash themselves frequently. They wash 

themselves with their teeth and their paws. Keeping their fur clean is very important. Their fur is

waterproof when it is clean. 
	
Sea otters are the heaviest members of the weasel family. They have the thickest fur out 

of all the animals. Their fur is also very valuable and that’s why people hunt them so  much. Sea 

otters can have as much as one million hairs per square inch on their fur. They have more hair in 

one square inch on their bodies than a person does on their whole head!  They can also live their 

whole life without getting out of the water. Sea otters mostly live in the northern pacific. They 

can live from Japan all the way to California.

	Sea otters have flatter tails than other otters do. They have super strong teeth to help them 

bite into hard things such as clam shells and sea urchin. They eat more than twelve pounds of 

food a day. A person who is 150 pounds normally eats thirty seven pounds of food a day. 

	
Cool Facts ABout Sea Otters.

	*Sea otters very rarely have twins. The chances of having twins for sea otters is a two 

percent chance.  The chance of both twins surviving is an even smaller chance. For sea otter

moms, raising two pups at once is very challenging. The mom normally has to give one up. The 

pup can usually live for another twenty four hours when its mom has to give it up. Moms have 

to give the pups up because it is very hard to nurse 

two pups and feed them and feed herself. It s a lot of 

responsibility to take care of one pup and it is even 

more responsibility to take care of two plus herself. 	
	


 



https://youtu.be/de6uTMEiZf0





http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/
http://www.defenders.org/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/sea-otter/#sea-otter-closeup2.jpg
https://www.wired.com/2013/06/rare-sea-otter-twins/