Sea Otters

Sea Otters are mammals and live close to the shore in the cold Pacific Ocean. The swim through kelp forests and need lots of food and clean water to live. They eat more than 40 different kinds of small animals like clams, crabs,squid, urchins,and others. Sea otters eat their food above the water laying on their  backs and use their stomachs as plates. They use rocks to crack open hard shells.

Sea Otters groom themselves for hours everyday. They scrub their faces and bodies with their paws and also somersault, twist, and turn to washes food scraps off their bodies for their fur to stay clean to be warm. Their fur is thicker than any other animal's. The fur has two layers that outside layer keeps the cold water out and inside layer stays warm and dry.

Baby seat otters are born in the water and they are called pups. Pups are about 2 feet long at birth and mother teaches her pup how to swim, dive, and hunt food. But she does the hunting until the pup is older. A Mother may wrap their pup in kelp to stay in one place while she is away to hunt. Pups starting hunting food around when they are 6 month old and become independent at 1 year old.

Sea otters live in groups called rafts and usually all boys or all girls. Otters in rafts often warp themselves in kelp and may sleep like this side by side.

We watched 3 short videos about how mother otters take care of their pups and using kelp to stay in one place.

We had a chance to make hand otter puppet using paper bag.