The sea otter is a very cute-looking animal, known as a professional cute, and there are a variety of memes circulating on the Internet, so that netizens can't let go. Sea otters are not only cute in appearance, but also reflect their cute side in activities such as eating, swimming, and sleeping. In 2013, it was ranked fifth on the list of the world's cutest species.
But even this cute animal has an unknown ferocity, and their reproductive process is full of violence. When mating, male sea otters are very aggressive, they will bite the nose of female sea otters, and even bite off a few pieces of meat, many females die in mating.
Selling cute professionals - sea otters
Sea otters are the smallest marine mammals on Earth, with a body length of about 1.5 meters and a weight of about 40 kilograms, which is very similar in size to canines, and male sea otters are a little larger than female sea otters. The tail of the sea otter is relatively long, accounting for a quarter of its body length.
If nothing else, they may spend their entire lives in the sea, so in order to adapt to life in the ocean, they can dive and swim, their hind legs are more developed, and they have webbeds like ducks, but their swimming speed is not very fast.
Compared to the hind legs, their front paws are relatively short, coupled with their rounded heads, so the sea otters look more cute from the front. Although their front paws are short, they are very useful, and they mainly rely on the front paws for their usual feeding. Sea otters' favorite food is sea urchins, but their shells are very hard and there are many sharp spikes on the surface, which comes in handy for their front paws. They swim back on the surface of the sea, then place the square stone on their chest and abdomen, and use their front paws to grab the sea urchin and smash it against the stone until the shell is smashed open and the flesh inside is exposed.
Sea otters are a veritable big stomach king, every day to eat 1/3 of their own weight of food, in addition to sea urchins, they also prefer to eat shells, crabs, etc., so their main eating posture is this backstroke posture, and this has become their unique symbol. They also have loose skin sacs under their forelimbs, and sea otters put leftover food into their skin pouches for re-consumption. If sea otters encounter stones that are more convenient to use, they will also be collected in skin bags.
Their front paws are very flexible, and in addition to making it easy to eat, they can also be used to build nests. Sea otters sometimes rest on rocks, but they also find small stones and use them to build nests, and the flexible front paws turn the sea otter into an architect. Most of the time, they sleep directly on the surface of the sea, which allows them to hide from predators on the shore.
Sea otters are social animals that always move in groups. On weekdays, they often play together in dozens or even hundreds, and when they encounter danger, they also avoid it collectively. This group way of living allows them to live more safely, and once a member finds danger approaching, they will use their tails to beat the water surface as an alarm signal, and other members will quickly avoid it.
In order to prevent them from being lost at sea, they will wrap seagrass around their bodies while sleeping, and then connect with other members, and it is very eye-catching to see a sea otter swaying with the waves on the sea.
Sea otters are also known for their "love of cleanliness", and they spend a long time throughout the day grooming their hair, from beginning to end. But they don't do it for the sake of stink, but to be able to survive better. Often in the polar sea water activities, fur plays an important protective role for them, if not cleaned in time, the fur will be more chaotic, but also easy to contaminate with grease, so that the sea water will soak the skin, sea otter is quickly lost heat, life is threatened.
Sea otters have a very fine fur and are definitely one of the best in the animal kingdom, allowing them to stay warm in cold environments. But it was because of this precious fur that sea otters were hunted by humans, and from the eighteenth century onwards, people around the Arctic hunted sea otters in large quantities to obtain their fur. In the 1990s, their populations fell to less than a thousand and became endangered until the law banned the killing of sea otters.
The cute appearance and cute movements of sea otters make them become emojis, which can be called the first "cute lord" in the emoji industry, constantly healing people's hearts.
Darkness during sea otter breeding
It is such a cute animal, but their reproductive process is not at all friendly. Male sea otters will show their terrifying side during mating, as if they are crazy, they are a complete violent maniac!
Male sea otters will draw a sphere of influence near themselves and will do exactly what they want during mating, regardless of the feelings of female sea otters. During mating, male sea otters will forcibly breed, if the female sea otter resists, the male will bite them, the male will often become scaly, but also likely to be bitten alive. Since males often bite the female's nose, the female's nose is often congested, and older females will have obvious scars on their noses.
Male sea otters also press female sea otters into the water, and although sea otters usually live in the sea, it is impossible for them to be underwater for a long time without breathing. Female sea otters are likely to suffocate to death, but male sea otters don't care about this at all, and they will mate until the end. What's even more surprising is that even if the female dies during mating, the male will not stop. Among the deaths of sea otters, female sea otters die due to mating account for about 10% of them, and mating can be said to be a fate for many female sea otters.
Sea otters practice a polygamous system, a male sea otter will look for multiple females to get along with, but each only spends a few days together, and the important reason they do this is to know if they are in the breeding period, and a male sea otter will also mate with multiple females during the breeding period.
The violence of male sea otters has led directly to a decline in the proportion of females, and if the males can't find a mating partner, they have a darker scene: male sea otters look for other species of animals, and seal pups are their targets. Male sea otters will find seal pups and forcibly mate with them, and these seal pups will end up in a terrible end, most of them will die under the violence of sea otters.
Female sea otters have a long gestation period, taking about a year to give birth to their cubs. And sea otters can only give birth to one cub per litter, the probability of twins is very small, and the cubs have to find their own food after the end of the 6-month lactation period. However, due to the lack of food, the survival rate of the cubs is not high. In order to obtain food, male sea otters often push their cubs into the water to threaten the female to hand over food, so that the behavior of "tiger poison eaters" shows their dark side to the fullest. Due to the fact that female sea otters often die from mating and the low survival rate of small sea otters, sea otters are not very numerous worldwide.
Such a brutal mating method of sea otters is rare in nature, but the breeding method of dolphins, another animal in the ocean, is also more ferocious. Like sea otters, dolphins are also more popular, they are also the only animals in nature besides humans that can get pleasure through sexual intercourse, male dolphins will look for female dolphins when they want to mate, and follow them for continuous chase, even tearing at females, sometimes a dozen males chase a female until the female gives in.
Dolphins have extremely high IQs, and many of their behaviors are similar to those of humans. There are also homosexuals in dolphins, and many male dolphins mate with female dolphins just to breed offspring, and their sexual orientation is still of the same sex. Dolphins sometimes have incestuous behavior, this animal is also "six relatives do not recognize" in this regard, dolphins have become the most chaotic private life in the animal kingdom.
There are many strange creatures in nature, and we had the same ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago. These animals evolved to behave similarly to humans, and they socialized, thought, and constantly showed their intelligence to humans. Animals like sea otters, although they have a cute appearance, they also have a dark side, which also tells us that we should not only pay attention to the surface of things, but also pay attention to its connotation, otherwise we will be deceived by appearance.
Author: Fat Pill Proofreader: Wei Yang