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The sea otter’s grooming regimen will be familiar to anyone with a cat. Like cats, sea otters spend considerable time licking and biting their fur to keep it clean and conditioned. Also like cats, they rub their faces and hard-to-reach places with their paws. However, unlike cats, sea otters do most of their grooming in the water. A sea otter’s grooming routine is not just to keep clean, it’s also crucial to their survival. This beautiful footage from wildlife videographer tammy_ascher shows a mother sea otter grooming her pup’s face. Keep reading to learn why this mother’s attentiveness is so important.
The Smallest Marine Mammal
Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are marine mammals, which means they depend on the ocean ecosystem to survive. The southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis), also known as the California sea otter, can be found along the coasts of central California. The mother and pup shown above were spotted near Monterey, California. The southern sea otter grows to a maximum of about 70 pounds and a length of around four feet, making them the smallest marine mammal in North America.
Unlike most marine mammals, sea otters do not have blubber to help keep them warm. Instead, they have two layers of fur. They have a dense undercoat with longer, waterproof guard hairs. Sea otters’ under-hairs interlock with the guard hairs on the outer coat to repel water and reduce heat loss. Sea otters have the thickest fur of any animal on Earth. Their fur can contain up to one million hair follicles per square inch, while a human head of hair only contains around 100,000 in total.
Why Is Grooming So Important?
For a sea otter’s fur to retain its waterproof properties, it must be kept clean. If the fur remains dirty or becomes matted, the resulting loss of heat can be fatal. The sea otter diet consists of invertebrates such as sea urchins, crabs, mussels, and squid that can cause grease to accumulate in their fur. As the otters lick their pelts to remove the grease, they also blow air into their undercoats. This forms air pockets that act as another layer of insulation.
Additionally, grooming distributes oil from their sebaceous glands into their fur, which also helps to waterproof it. Sea otters spend 25%-50% of their day grooming. However, researchers believe the air bubble they create insulates them four times better than a comparable layer of blubber.
Maternal Care of Sea Otter Pups
A sea otter pup’s care is entirely the responsibility of the mother. The pups are born in the water. They are about 10 inches long and weigh around 3-5 pounds at birth. Sea otter pups are born with a shaggy, light yellowish-brown coat of fur called lanugo, which is even thicker than an adult’s fur. The mother’s first task is to ensure the pup’s fur is groomed and aerated. The light, fluffy fur keeps the pup from sinking while the mother forages for food. She wraps the pup in strands of kelp so it won’t drift away.
The mother otter nurses the pup for around six months, although the pup may eat some solid foods at around 6-8 weeks old. The mother otter swims on her back and the pup is nursed and groomed on her stomach. She grooms the pup for around three months, or until the pup develops its adult fur. Once a sea otter pup loses its baby fur, it can dive with its mother to learn how to find food. The pups are dependent on their mothers until they are fully weaned between 6-8 months old.
Sea otters also have a high metabolism to help keep them warm. However, to maintain their energy, they need to eat around 25%-30% of their body weight, which can take 20%-50% of the day. A new mother’s energy demands increase as her pup gets bigger. Researchers found that the mother’s energy expenditure eventually reaches 96% higher, requiring her to hunt for almost twice her daily food intake to feed her pup and herself. This just goes to show the extraordinary lengths sea otter mothers will go to in order to raise their pups.
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