SOMETIMES FACT IS STRANGER THEN FICTION. THE FOLLOWING IS A VERY WELL WRITTEN ARTICLE (OF COURSE I DIDN'T WRITE IT , I DID
SAY "WELL WRITTEN")AND WOULD HELP TO SHED LIGHT ON WHAT IS A MISUNDERSTOOD CREATURE, WARNING , YOU MIGHT JUST LEARN TO LIKE
THEM (I used caps only to express excitement, no flamimg or  screamimg was or is intended, enjoy)

ferret 4/25/00

FALL 1996
Cuisine and Table Manners Learned from Mom

by Marianne Riedman

The young California sea otter was sleeping soundly in her usual spot in Monterey Harbor. It was Female 515, also known as
Josie, who had been raised here by her mother, amid the constant boat traffic and human activity. I watched with interest as
a couple of kayakers glided by and stopped. I knew they might be in for a surprise, for Josie was a notorious harasser of
kayaks and small rowboats, on which she liked to hitch rides. She seemed to find this particular type of kayak, which lies
very low to the water, especially irresistible. By now the otter was staring intently at the kayakers. Josie stretched,
twirled in the kelp and dove, disappearing beneath the glassy surface. Almost half a minute passed. Everything was quiet and
the kayakers had started to paddle away.


Suddenly, the otter exploded out of the water and landed on the back of one kayak, nearly tipping it over. I could see the
shock and surprise on the kayaker's face. He'd probably been warned not to disturb or harass sea otters in any way, and he
must have seen the posted signs cautioning people to stay at least 50 feet from the shy and easily disturbed otters. But
Josie made this rule a little difficult to obey.


As the man struggled to keep his balance, the young female slid off his boat and headed for the other kayak, but its occupant
wasn't waiting around. He sprinted off as fast as he could, with Josie in hot pursuit. Since sea otters can swim up to six
miles an hour in short bursts, it took a good two minutes of frantic paddling for him to outdistance her.


I felt a little guilty for laughing, but it was hard to restrain myself when watching such otter antics. I'd been following
Josie since she was a young pup,and now she was nearly three years old, still young for a sea otter. (Female sea otters live
as long as 15-20 years, while male lifespan usually ranges from 10-15 years.)


"Is that what otters usually do?" asked a surprised tourist who saw the incident.


"No," I replied, "but that's what this otter usually does."


"Why does she do that?"


I could think of no reason other than it must be fun. Sea otters, especially pups and young juveniles, are marvelously
curious and playful marine mammals. Of course, most wild otters are much more reserved around humans. But there were those
fearlessly friendly individuals, like Josie, especially along the northern Monterey Peninsula where otters are constantly
exposed to divers and boaters.


Sea otters' curiosity and resourcefulness probably has survival value, for they must be intelligent and innovative learners
to find, capture, and break open the prey on which they feed. And as I had come to learn, whether at work or at play there
were many exceptions to "typical" otter behavior.


Josie was one of over 60 tagged California sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis) in Monterey Bay that I studied from 1985 to
1995, with the assistance of many observers. Ten years of intensive study have revealed that no two sea otters are alike.
Each has a unique personality. In fact, a remarkable degree of individual variation attends almost everything about sea
otters: their diet and foraging behavior, tool-use techniques, the tendency to haul out on land, reproductive behavior,
vocalizations, and, as Josie illustrates, their response to humans. Sometimes I could even guess the identity of an otter
based solely on its resting position, before I was able to see its hindflipper tags; Female 182, for instance, often rested
with her forelegs stiffly outstretched at an angle, forming a characteristic and conspicuous V. The striking differences
among sea otters underscore the importance of studying individual animals over long periods of time.


 The northern Monterey Peninsula offers an ideal study site. Here otters remain close to shore, and most stay in the same
area for years. Sea otters in many parts of Alaska and Russia, representing two different subspecies from the California
otter, can be much harder to track from shore. Fortunately for us, a Monterey Bay otter does nearly everything in plain view.
Looking from shore with a Questar spotting scope, we can record the type of food an individual eats, how it uses tools, who
it mates with, and when a female gives birth and weans her pup. Most carnivores, in contrast, are much more secretive and
difficult to observe, and, unlike many other marine mammals, sea otters are only underwater for a minute or so during feeding
dives. They rest, breed, and socialize on the surface.




One of the more surprising findings to emerge from this long-term study is that each otter has its own distinctive diet,
usually preferring to eat only one, two, or three kinds of food from 33 types of prey eaten by otters in Monterey Bay. For
years, and probably throughout its lifetime, an otter continues to eat the same foods and use the same feeding strategies.


A female known as the Ab Queen, for instance, specialized in abalone (Haliotis spp.), although she also ate some rock crab
(Cancer spp.) and purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). Even though abalone are difficult for human divers to
find here, the Ab Queen was amazingly adept at locating these scarce, choice delicacies. Each week she probably consumed two
hundred or so.


Female 508 favored another well-hidden species, octopus (Octopus spp.). Once she captured 20 small octopuses in a single
feeding boutÑan astonishing feat to human divers, who hardly ever see this shy cephalopod underwater.


Female 520 specialized in fat innkeeper worms (Urechis caupo). These huge, unappetizing-looking worms burrow deeply into the
sandy bottom, and it's nearly impossible for a diver to dig one up. But during one foraging bout, this female collected 44
worms in 46 minutes and swallowed about one worm per minute. Rock oysters (Pododesmus cepio) and crabs rounded out her diet.


A large territorial male named Nosebuster, due to the especially rough manner in which he grabbed females' noses while
mating, ate practically nothing but small, brown turban snails (Tegula spp.). He seemed to be eating every time I saw him,
perhaps because he had to capture so many of the tiny snails to obtain sufficient calories each day. Like other territorial
males, he often stole food from adult females. Most of the thieves, both male and female, tended to steal the same type of
prey they captured on their own.


Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters have very little blubber. To fuel the high metabolism that helps them stay warm in
the chilly 35 to 60 degrees F ocean waters, they have to eat a lot. Each day an otter must consume between 23 to 33 percent
of its body weight in food. Nosebuster, who weighed a hefty 67 pounds, probably had to capture many hundreds of snails each
day to ingest the 15 to 22 pounds of food needed just to sustain himself.


The pronounced individual variation in foraging strategies and diet among sea otters of the same age and sex classes feeding
in the same area has rarely been documented in other animals. Theoretically, there should be strong selection pressure
towards an "optimal" diet for all individuals. An otter like Nosebuster would seem to be at a disadvantage, since he must
presumably forage for many more hours to meet his daily food needs with tiny snails, compared to Ab Queen, who eats
calorie-rich abolone. The fact that snails are much easier to find and capture than abalone somewhat balances out these
inequities, yet the overall profitability per item of prey like abalone and rock crabs is much higher than for snails,
mussels, or purple sea urchins.


Although we don't fully understand why these strikingly specialized diets arose, we now have some idea how each otter
acquires its specific diet. I suspected that feeding habits might be matrilineally inherited, with mothers passing on their
dietary preferences to their offspring. After all, pups remain with their mothers constantly for about six months and have
plenty of opportunity to learn how to forage by watching mother. Although they suckle until being weaned, pups over one month
old usually receive or steal at least some of their mother's food each time she surfaces from a dive. On average, a mother
shares just over a quarter of her prey with her young, though some are much more generous.




We were able to collect sufficient information on three grown daughters and several dependent pups to show that the offspring
did indeed tend to eat the same foods as their mothers. In fact, the adult daughters often also chose the same type of tool
and method of tool use, fed in the same area, and employed other foraging tactics similar or identical to those of their
mothers. The male pups we observed also tended to select the same foods as their mothers, but we were unable to follow
juvenile male offspring because they so often left the area where they were weaned.


Whitehead, a female that we studied until she was 15 years old, preferred to eat kelp crabs (Pugettia spp.), mussels (Mytilus
spp.), and some purple urchins. When she was eight years old, Whitehead had a pup we named Notch because of a V-shaped notc


Female 184 fed on mussels, turban snails, and kelp crabs, often in shallow water close to shore. Her daughter, Female 535,
stayed by her side for over nine months--the longest pup dependency period ever recorded for a California sea otter. After
she was weaned, Female 535 not only ate most of the same foods as her mother but even fed in the same area.


From her mother, Female 535 had learned an unusual feeding strategy that we called the "surf grass salad bar." Both otters
dove to the bottom and collected a large clump of surf grass (Phyllospadix spp.). On the surface, they rested this "salad" on
their chests, while leisurely picking out tiny kelp crabs hidden among the bundle of long, green grasses. Sometimes, like a
true crustacean connoisseur, Female 535 would pull strands through her mouth and nibble off the tiny crabs.


Josie's mother, Female 190, liked to eat small, pearly shelled rock oysters plus the occasional fat innkeeper worm. Josie's
younger sister, affectionately known as Tubehead after she slipped a clear plastic tube snugly over her entire head as she
played with it, also ate rock oysters as a juvenile and adult and often fed in the harbor where she grew up.


More intriguingly, Female 190 always used a very distinctive tool to dislodge the oysters: a glass bottle. After she was
weaned, Tubehead, too, used a bottle to crack loose her oysters. On several occasions while she was a dependent pup, I also
witnessed Josie using a bottle as a tool. Although she spent a lot of time in Monterey Harbor, we were not often able to
observe Josie's foraging habits after she matured, so we cannot say whether this habit continued. The fact that two
generations used such an unusual tool perhaps provides some of the most compelling evidence that offspring learn foraging
tactics from their mothers.
(please go to part two)