Sea otter

ANATOMY

The sea otter is the furriest animal on Earth, with up to 150,000 hairs per square centimeter of skin.

Sea otters have flaps of skin under their forelegs that act as pockets. When diving, they use these pouches to store their favorite rocks to use for breaking open shellfish.

Adult sea otters typically weigh between 14 and 45 kg (31 and 99 lb), making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smallest marine mammals.

BEHAVIOR

Sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other.

Mother sea otters have been observed to lick and fluff a newborn for hours; after grooming, the pup's fur retains so much air, the pup floats like a cork and cannot dive.

Sea otters have to eat 25–38% of their body weight to counteract heat loss in cold, watery environments.

The sea otter is the only marine mammal that catches fish with its forepaws rather than its teeth.

Sea otters swim in same-sex groups called rafts.

HABITAT 

Sea otters live along the Pacific coast of North America. Their historic range stretched in an arc across the North Pacific from northern Japan to the central Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.

Unlike other mustelids, the sea otter doesn't make dens and can live its entire life without ever leaving the water. In fact, it's so different from other mustelids that some scientists have suggested it's more closely related to earless seals.

Humans hunted the sea otter for their rich fur almost to extinction. By the time the 1911 Fur Seal Treaty gave them protection, so few sea otters remained that the fur trade had become unprofitable.

Although once near extinction, the sea otter has begun to spread again, from small populations in Alaska and California. Their global population has rebounded from 1,000 to 100,000.