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I feel like there’s a real missed opportunity here to lean on this particular otter’s gene pool to breed the seafaring version of St. Bernard alpine rescue dogs.
Though it’s also possible I’ve watched too much Octonauts with my kids.
With this one's genes it's more likely to be an anti-St.Bernard, stalking down surfers and putting them in peril by stealing their boards.
In tech bro terms it is just trying to acquire resources necessary for expansion of the business in the interest of creating shareholder value.
Upvoted for the Octonauts mention. Creature's report, creature's report.
It’s singular! ‘Creature report, creature report!’
You mean like a Newfie [0]?
Just what we need, more kooks on Wavestorms in the water!
(Explanation for non-surf adjacent folks: kook is a “n00b” and Wavestorm is a brand of foam boards that you used to be able to buy at Costco for $99 or whatever. Forget the fact that they are actually quite capable boards and many really good surfers will paddle out on them, it became a symbol of good surfers having a bad day dodging people who can’t surf. Note: I am most definitely a kook / horrible surfer who doesn’t anymore, but never actually owned a Wavestorm)
Came here for the kook reply, wasn’t disappointed.
I still own my Wavestorm.
Been surfing for 15 years, own more than that many boards, and a wavestorm is still my daily driver.
It’s just always fun.
It's not just the otters, seals and dolphins also love surfboards;
(possibly geo restricted to AU) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAzI13tT0Gk
(just the event) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOHULsrvtTE
(san diego seal) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2M01_9jVk
but mostly they just like to mix in with the surfers and do their own thing:
Links all work in Canada
> Local officials call the animal Otter 841
referring to the otter throughout the article as "841" made me imagine they were a science experiment
or a retired hit-otter
it's a pretty cool series of digits, said out loud
It is. If their goal by using a number was to not anthropomorphize it, they failed, because Otter 841 is one adorable secret agent turned surfer.
Some animals learn to use tools to solve problems, for example crows [0]. What if that otter was just using the board to travel longer distances (=> finding more food) by keeping nearby a safer place to rest on?
Otters are known to use tools. I’ve read that some carry around a ‘favorite’ rock under a flap of skin, using it to open shellfish.
This is a slippery slope to a surfing sea otter vs. boat-wrecking orca showdown in the Pacific.
>If a human should be bitten, the state has no choice but to euthanize the otter.
That's pretty gross. I'm sure there are ways around that, especially for an endangered species.
Unfortunately there’s no great answer — any mammal that bites could carry rabies even if not obviously rabid, and there’s no way to test for that when the animal’s alive. Running the prophylactic for rabies also ain’t cheap and runs the risk of human noncompliance, meaning someone ends up rabid (and eventually, dead).
If the State does not euthanize it after a bite, they could be found liable if someone gets bitten again. There’s also the question of rabies, the detection of which requires examination of the brain tissue.
It's not a liability issue. States generally have sovereign immunity over such things, and there is no legal requirement to protect people from wild animal attacks. This is more a matter of public safety, and humans generally come first.
They can capture it and keep it, if possible, but that is difficult, expensive, and not always available.
There is a recent popular book on it, Fuzz: When Animals Break the Law, by Mary Roach. She goes into the challenges facing human animal interaction. There's a lot to it, much of it unfortunately bad for the animals.
I suppose it is gross because it highlights how completely we lack respect for nature (all other species), prioritizing the safety/dominance of 7 billion humans?
Exactly, it's a power dynamic. Maybe someday something will come along and see the example we've set here and apply it to us.
This and the recent orca stories have made me wonder about animal meta-learning: the mental processes that go into motivating, succeeding and sustaining non-instinctual behaviors. Clearly different kinds of animals can be trained to behave in certain ways. Is it possible to train an animal to train other animals?
In 1589, Leonard Mascall explained his method of training oxen by yoking them together with others in his book the 'Government of Cattel' (extract abridged by me):
"Some doe yoke them together... ye shal likewise take good heede that one oxe touch not another with their hornes, so within two or three dayes that yee see them waxe more tame... to frame a young oxe to the plough or carte, yée shall matche him best with an olde oxe that is tame, very strong and gentle, which will holde the young oxe backe if he be too hastie, or plucke him forward, if he be too slowe, or if ye will ye may make a yoke for three oxen, and put the young oxe in the middes, and by that meanes ye shall make the most hardiest oxe to be tame, and refuse no labour at the length. For the young oxe (being neuer so stubborne) in remaining betweene the two olde oxen, they will if he be too flacke, constrayne him to drawe, or if he would shoote forwarde, they will holde him backe and stay him, or if he would draw backe, they will holde him forwarde. Also if he would lye downe, the other wil hold him vp. Thus by pollicie he may be let of his stubborne frowardnes. Also yoke him to wilde bullockes that haue not laboured before, and so let them gee yoked lose together for two or three daies, and so they will waxe tame. And a little chastening after willmake him endure to labour wel..."
Link to the book's text[1] if you would like to read it in full. For a book which predates copyright it took me far too long to find an openly accessible version!
Similarly, horses have traditionally been broken into harness by having at first the foal run alongside the vehicle, which is pulled by older horses (I have heard that the foal's mother is ideal). When the horse is old enough, it can be harnessed itself, again next to experienced draught horses. Essentially this is exploiting the animals' instinct to follow the example of their elders. I think it sounds like a rather humane method of horse training, but I don't think it's as common as other methods these days.
[1]: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A07176.0001.001/1:1?rgn=di...
I sometimes wonder how much "animal culture" might exist in the wild that we are somehow missing, simply because it doesn't survive the transplant to environments where we can do detailed studies. (Either because the environment itself is so strange it gets disrupted, or how the individual animals were rescued/abducted/raised and introduced, etc.)
For example, what all if those notoriously-non-reproducing zoo pandas just... didn't get the right bad-influences when they were growing up? Some zoos have even attempted to use panda-porn to address the issue.
I had a pet chinchilla once. I got him after he finished what amounts to chinchilla school. The breeder explained to me that she can’t immediately separate a chinchilla after it starts eating normal food as it needs to be taught to bathe, chew, and other chinchilla things by the older chinchillas. There can definitely be animal culture, and from what I have observed most animals have some level it. I find that humans give ourselves way too much credit. We may be smarter, but I don’t think it’s by all that much really… just that the last bit of smarts makes a rather large impact.
> exist in the wild that we are somehow missing
An Immense World by Ed Yong about sense and sense processing of living things convinces me there is a lot we human's misapprehend or uncomprehend about the world.
https://www.amazon.com/Immense-World-Animal-Senses-Reveal/dp...
Our Umwelt is still limited; it just doesn’t feel that way. To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion, and one that every animal shares.
I have not the academic studies to support it, but I have personally witnessed many occasions where mother animals teach their offspring how to behave in context, as well as externally introduced animals influencing the relatively "indigent" population. Cats and dogs, I mean. Cats and dogs both can and sometimes learn behavior from other animals that were in a place first, and from newly introduced ones.
I wonder sometimes if there are certain instinctual behaviors "unlocked" in some way. I have a cat raised from infancy without other cats (an unsanctioned rescue that I eye-dropper fed and wet wiped to the point of self-sufficiency); she never purred in my presence for 6 years, but seems to have learned purring from an adult cat temporarily introduced into our home for a few months. That other cat is gone, but now my cat purrs frequently.
Dogs do similar - they learn behaviors from all influences, and behaviors learned from other dogs (and other animals) seem to be more "sticky" than treat/avoidance training strategies.
I'm sure it was cute the first couple of times...
Some animals have this way of doing things over and over for a very long time, for many days.
It's not cute at day 155.
I would expect the other animals feel that same way about the autistic primates taking over pretty much everything...
Maybe she just has good taste in surfboards and so destroys every Chinese wavestorm she sees?
This is absolutely not the strangest thing I've seen in Santa Cruz.
Otter gets habituated by humans feeding it. Researchers capture the otter and it loses even more fear of humans. Researchers release the otter, and now plan to capture and interact with it again because it isn't afraid of humans. I presume it will become even more habituated to humans after researchers recapture it.
Wouldn't this problem sort itself out if a few kayakers gave the otter some harmless smacks with their paddles to instill a little fear?
The article indicates that it was 841's mother who was likely fed by humans. 841 was born in captivity and care was taken to prevent human association:
The pup was raised by her mother until she was weaned, then moved to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. To bolster her chances for success upon release, 841’s caretakers took measures to prevent the otter from forming positive associations with humans, including wearing masks and ponchos that obscured their appearance when they were around her.
That will just make her mad. Then she’ll steal your kayak.
Assuming the article is accurate, areas that have a lot of surfers don’t tend to be ideal for kayaking. A small subset of kayakers would definitely disagree though.
Having a surfboard with sea otter bite marks would be sooo coool...
I bet that the otter will not touch the black and white ones.
Next we're going to have Sea Otters riding Orcas and stealing our sailboats. Friggen 2023 man.
I think surfrider foundation should just gift that otter a board...
I wonder if that could help it "get bored" of surfboards.
Yeah a nice traditional redwood board.
"goofy foot otter" is the name of my next band.
you would think 841 would prefer an otter island longboard.
It seems so senseless. Why does she destroy the surfboards instead of selling them? I know plenty of surfers that would buy a slightly used surfboard from a sea otter, no questions asked.
Seriously!