Baby otters need to be fed, groomed and cleaned every two hours, but they also need to be able to bond with their own species. And, as snuggle substitutes, they exchanged dry towels for people. The staff recently isolated pups from interaction with all humans except a core group of caretakers who engage them as little as possible. Hymer lets me sneak into the nursery while Summer eagerly sucks her bottle, her teddy-bear button eyes looking intently at Hymer. The little otter is a wonder of evolution, a perfect specimen of land-based mammals that returned to the sea just five to seven million years ago, a mere blink in time s long stare.
Sea otters can spend their entire lives in the ocean, where they mate and give birth.
They sleep on their backs, bobbing in the waves, keeping their paws and flippers out of the cold water to retain heat. They forage along coastlines, or on clam beds several miles from shore. But unlike seals or sea lions, sea otters' genetic history didn t prepare them for constant exposure to 50-degree water. We humans grow a paltry 100,000 hairs over our entire heads. In their waking hours, when they aren t eating, they re rolling, twisting, shaking and rubbing themselves to oil and fill their fur with air bubbles that act as insulation.