Sea otter has an eye-catching cute appearance, so it once ranked fifth in the list of the cutest animals in the world. In addition to the appearance, the eating, sleeping, bathing, etc. almost all of its actions are lovely, except for one behavior: breeding. Surprisingly, this cute little animal is actually very cruel in the breeding process. The sea otters have a particularly high fatality rate during breeding because males often kill females. Of course, the skin of sea otter is also one of the best and most expensive skins in the world, which makes it almost extinct after being killed by the European.
Appearance of Sea Otter
As one of the most cutest animals on earth, the adult male sea otter can be as long as 1.5 meters and weighs 45 kg. The sea otters are slightly smaller, and they are about the same size and weight as a giant dog. Sea otters have short forelegs, long hind legs and duck like fins, so they are suitable for swimming and diving. However, their swimming speed is not fast, which is only about the same as that of human race in 100 meters.
Sea otters are social animals, with dozens or even hundreds living in groups. They are also one of the most water-adapted of any carnivore in the world. They spend most of their lives on the surface of the water, where they hunt, sleep, give birth and raise their children. They rarely come to land, and the reason is that they have some of the finest fur of any animal in the world.
Fur, the Most Precious Possession of Sea Otter
For the most part, sea otters live in the frigid waters near the Arctic Ocean, and the reason they can stay in the cold water all the time without freezing is their fur. The data shows that there will be more than 100 human hairs grow on a square centimeter, while that of the sea otter is 30,000 to 100,000. We can imagine what the fine fur a sea otter has. As a result, the hat made from sea otter fur can cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Except for the palm and the tip of the nose, the whole body of sea otter is covered with this extremely fine fur and subcutaneous fat layer, so that sea otters cannot be afraid of cold water and heat loss, and can easily float on the water without sinking. Since the palms of sea otters are not covered with such fur, they often place their palms over their faces to warm up, giving people a sense of being blindfolded.
In order to keep warm and float in the water at all times, sea otters must keep their fur fluffy and clean at any time. Therefore, sea otters will spend a lot of time combing and cleaning their fur, and sea otter mothers will also help their babies clean their fur while floating in the water. The daily life of a sea otter is basically eating, sleeping and cleaning fur.
It is precisely because of their special and precious fur that sea otters have been hunted since they were first discovered in the 18th century, after the great European voyages began. In particular, people in Russia, a cold region, were crazy about sea otter fur. As a result, the number of sea otters decreased sharply, and finally they were on the verge of extinction. Later, sea otter was included in the list of endangered species, and their killing was strictly prohibited, which made their number increase again.
Feeding of Sea Otters
Since sea otters live in a cold environment, they need to eat a lot of food to keep their body temperature. They can eat food weighting one fourth of their own weight, which is equivalent to an adult man weighing 120 kilograms eating 30 kilograms of food every day. This is absolutely a terrible number. They mainly eat shellfish, abalone, sea urchin, crab and sea urchin. However, we all know that these creatures have hard shells with long spines, so how can sea otters eat this kind of food? The answer is that they use their chest!
Sea otters are the only mammals other than humans, apes and monkeys that use tools to get food. They will put a stone on their chest, and then use the stone to smash the sea urchin. Sometimes they will directly pick up the stone and hit the sea urchin on the ground. What’s more interesting is that if a sea otter comes across a stone that is easy to use, it will collect this stone and use it to smash foods all times.
Sea urchins are an important part of the marine food chain, because the survival of marine organisms, especially those in the temperate and polar regions, is inseparable from the kelp forests. These undersea forests provide a living environment for many marine animals. Sea urchins like to eat kelp forests, which will lead to the disappearance of large-scale kelp forests. And sea otters especially like to eat sea urchins, and they can eat more than 50 sea urchins a day at most. Therefore, the existence of sea otter is very important for maintaining the marine ecological environment. The decrease of sea otters may lead to the disappearance of kelp forest and marine desertification.
Sleeping of Sea Otter: Be Carried Along by the Tide
With the fur, sea otters can easily float on the water and avoid the attack of predators on the land. Therefore, sea otters will sleep on the sea at night. However, in order to prevent being carried along to other places by the tide, they will entangle themselves with seaweed and sleep hand in hand. It is ridiculous that they only sleep with the same sex with their hands in hands.
You may think that sea otters are very cute, but actually, sea otters have the most violent and evil breeding process and habit among other animals in the world.
The Dark Breeding
In fact, the genitals of many organisms have bones. This structure can keep them hard all the time. After all, bones will not be soften, so they can make males reproduce more frequently and persistently, which is more conducive to the continuation of the population.
The bones in the sea otter’s genitals are 15 centimeters long, which accounts for one tenth of their height. This length is absolutely outstanding among other animals. Maybe it’s because of this or too much androgen secretion, the sea otter’s breeding process is very violent. The male often does not care about the female’s feelings, but directly presses the female for force reproduction. If the female resists, the male will hold or bite the female’s head and nose and begin his frantic reproductive process.
Because the time is too long, and the female is pressed in the water and hard to breathe, the females may die because of suffocation during the breeding process. According to incomplete surveys, the number of female sea otters die as a result of rape by males accounts for about 4-10% of all deaths, which is a frightening number. What is more terrible is that even if the female has died in the breeding process, the male will not stop his behavior until it’s over.
With the cute appearance, the sea otter is actually the dark king of the biosphere!
