Otter Joy's Guest Book

I don't see what's the point in hunting otters for fur. How would YOU feel if a little spotted necked otter hunted you down because he wanted your hair for a wig?

I have been searching for otters for years and keep a few at home in my lake. I am soon moving to Chesterfield to take up a new job and hope to continue my obsession down there. Please e-mail me if you like to talk about otters.

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Great web site full of info and pics

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I enjoy learning more and seeing others comments who enjoy
them as well. Loved reading the journals and stories of these fascinating creatures

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Great Site! I currently belong to the River Otter Alliance and the International Otter Survival Fund. Both are dedicated to the welfare and survival of these amazing creatures. Check them out on the Web.

And remember the touching words Gavin Maxwell enscribed on the memorial to Edal, Gavin's pet otter, who tragically perished in a fire: "Whatever Joy She Gave To You, Give Back To Nature"

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‘Otterjoy’ is a fantastic site offering much good reading and advice. Most people (especially some fishermen) believe that river otters exist by swimming around preying on large fish. I am not one of these. Otters have a very fast digestive system which means that when you keep one, they need to eat little and often. To me this means that in the wild they constantly graze small fry along the shallows rather than gorge on big powerful game fish.

Another pointer is that otters do not swim terribly fast (in fish terms) and they can’t hold their breath for all that long. Don’t get me wrong, they love a good feast just like the rest of us, but in the wild, big feasts are few and far between. Large fish are simply too fast and too powerful.

There are many differing ideas about feeding otters in captivity. I lived with a tame Eurasian otter for two years whilst looking after several others that were semi-tame. I tried various diets; mince, soaked biscuit the occasional raw egg and sea fish, (usually herring or whiting). Eels were a favourite of course. (Fish ‘n chicks is an old joke!)

Now here’s the thing, I found that the otters in my care could not thrive on sea fish alone and were not all that fussed about it - even though herring is supposed to be a well balanced diet. Freshwater fish however, was a different story.

In the end I discovered a trout hatchery that had lost thousands of small fish due to the water becoming deoxygenated in hot weather. This farm had tons of them in the deep freeze. They were no good for humans because they were no bigger than five inches long but boy did I have a use for them! I found that the otters would eat them to the exclusion of almost everything and they thrived and thrived!

At this point I should add that even when put in a pool populated with live trout the otters couldn’t catch them outright!

This was all quite a few years ago when sea fish was relatively cheap compared with freshwater fish. I wonder if that is still the case? This phenomenon has always puzzled me. Can you help?

Hi Pete!  I'm looking forward to reading more about Spade on your website. 

There are a lot of different schools of thought about giving sea fish to otters.  As a major constituent of the diet, there are worries that it causes vitamin deficiencies and may lead to the perenial bugbear of captive otters - kidney stones.  At one point, people were advised against feeding sea fish at all, but the AZA now includes fish like capelin in their fish diet for Lontra canadensis, which is a very carefully formulated diet being trialled at present to see if it wards off the dreaded urolithiasis.   Even that diet includes non-fish items, so I don't think that sea fish is considered well-balanced any more.

I'm going to review the literature about diet of wild Lutra lutra tonight, and see what Kruuk, Conroy and so on found, and then I'll update this. I remember that in Scotland, the preferred sea fish were small, slow benthic (i.e. bottom-dwelling) fish, and that otters, like most predators, will usually take the easy meal rather than, as you say, spend energy chasing something harder to catch.  Wild otters of all species are not single-species predators - apart from maybe Sea Otters, their diet includes fish, small mammals, crustacea, molluscs, birds, amphibians, reptiles and anything else they can easily lay paw on. If anyone reading has information about this, please write in!

Captive otters I have observed appear to be pretty fussy!  Some like sea fish, others won't touch it.  Otters (Lutra lutra, Lontra canadensis or Aonyx cinereus) that have been brought up with a varied diet are much more willing to try new things, and people that feed fish, meat, crayfish, mealworms, chicks and so on - 'whatever is fresh and good today' - in several small, varied meals per day find they will eat sea fish happily as part of a wide diet. Otters kept with a more restricted variety of diet are probably more vulnerable to constituent deficiencies, but also less willing to try something new (personal observation).  Out of the zoos I have visited during the KASBAH project, the most commonly fed fish so far is trout, for all species of otters (of course, even though I am observing short-claws, I can't help but also find out about the others!). 

Again, some tame otters seem to have no problems catching live prey, although the UK ban on feeding live vertebrates makes this hard to evaluate.  On the "Zoo" programme from Auckland Zoo, three short-claws made easy work of a live eel, which wouldn't even normally form part of their wild prey and was much longer than they were!  Certainly if live crayfish are put into the pool, the zoo otters I know will chase and catch them, and there are numerous reports of zoo otters taking water birds foolish enough to hang around in their enclosures.  Whether this is solely inate behaviour or whether mother zoo otters teach their cubs that this is a normal part of life, is a good question.  Hand-reared otters do seem less inclined to go to any effort chasing live prey, though Bertie, Belinda and the late Beenie, hand-reared small-claws, will all hunt and kill small fish in the river when out for a walk - but they won't actually eat them, because they prefer mince!

I'll get back to you on this - you've raised some interesting questions.

Did you feed any vegetables or fruit?

And I love otters because they look cute, can be fierce or loving as the mood takes them and as you say, don't take orders.  Joe Davis wrote to me the dogs have masters, cats have staff and otters have partners - junior partners, that is. . .

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Most otters do not live in families. The male and female only meet to mate, and thereafter the female otter has to bring up the cubs by herself.  The exceptions are the Asian Small-Clawed Otter and the Giant Otter live in big families led by the mother and father together.

Most otters hunt by chasing fish through the water using their whiskers to feel the water currents.  They catch the fish in their jaws and carry it to the surface to eat.  To help them swim fast, they have webbed feet and they have claws to help hold onto the slippery fish.  The Asian Small-Clawed Otter and the African Clawless Otters don't hunt like this - they have very little webbing on their paws, and hardly any claws at all, but their fingers are very sensitive, and they feel in crevices in rocks, and through mud for the shellfish and crabs that they eat.  The Sea Otter lives on big shellfish and urchins, and to catch them, it dives down to the bottom of the kelp beds and picks them up, tucking them into its armpit.  Also under its arm, it carries a favourite flat stone.  When it gets back to the surface, it rolls on its back, takes out the flat stone and balances it on its tummy, and bashes the shells against it to open them so it can eat the juicy meat inside.

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