“Oysterous and boisterous.” Spend a minute and a half watching and listening to these hungry sea otters crack and eat shellfish in their pool at the Oregon Zoo.
Sea otters are known for their ability to use tools in the wild, cracking open shellfish and other hard-shelled prey with or on rocks, something like this:
They also use their powerful jaws and teeth to crack open the shells and then use their tongues to extract the meat inside. Swimming on their backs, they use their chests like snack trays while they eat. More from the zoo:
“Sea otters spend most of their time near the shore. They eat, rest, groom themselves, and breed in the water. They swim belly-up, moving through the water at 3-5 miles an hour with their webbed hind feet. They use their long, flat tails as rudders.”
“A sea otter dives for food, usually in water no deeper than 60 feet, but it can hold its breath for 5 minutes and dive to 300 feet or more if needed. It eats bottom-dwelling sea animals, including sea urchins, abalone, crabs, clams, and squid. Because its metabolism is 2-3 times the rate of other mammals its size, it needs to eat about 25% of its weight every day.”
Here’s another sea otter vs shellfish video from 2021:
Watch these otterly adorable otter videos next:
• Otters play in Zoo Knoxville’s Clayton Otter Creek
• The Fantastic Fur of Sea Otters – Deep Look
• A baby river otter gets a swimming lesson from its mother
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