Sea Otter Baby Steals Her Mom's Crab
This mega-viral video of a sea otter mom and her pup has over 10 MILLION views on YouTube. But is the otter mom REALLY sharing? Or is the cheeky otter pup trying to steal a tasty snack? I’ll use my decades worth of experience as a marine biologist who has not only worked with sea otters, but also hand raised orphaned sea otter pups, to analyze and explain what is really going on in this adorable video.
Recently, I've been getting a lot of questions about "what do sea otters do during storms, like the atmospheric rivers that are hitting California?" While sea otters are typically better than pinnipeds at weathering storms… weather related strandings do occur.
From the video, it’s clear that the sea otter mom is still nursing and her pup hasn’t fully transitioned from milk to solid foods. The otter pup is obviously VERY interested in solid foods but it’s possible the mother sea otter recognizes that her pup doesn’t really know what to do with a crab.
Sea otter moms absolutely will share their food but they also ride a very fine line in the wild. They have to feed their pups and sustain themselves at the same time. So mom sea otters have to forage twice as hard when they’re caring for a pup.
Additionally, pups are entirely dependent on their moms for about six to eight months. The pup can’t even swim for several weeks after being born. That’s because otter pups have a different coat than adults, called lanugo, and it acts as a life preserver. It quite literally prevents them from diving underwater. Instead, they float on the surface like a cork. They’ll start shedding the lanugo when they’re around 2 months old. Even then it’s very difficult for them to dive and swim.
Sea otter moms will spend all of their time tending to the baby on her belly. She will groom it, feed it, play with it, and sleep with it. And I can see, in case you’re interested, that the pup in this video is a female. So it’s possible that she’ll be a mom herself one day and have a relentless pup of her own trying to steal her snacks.
Most of the marine mammals, including sea otters, that I’ve worked with were tragically separated from their mothers at a very young age. Some of them were just days old and still had their umbilical cords. This meant they had to be raised by hand by a team of veterinarians and marine biologists, myself included. I spent many days and nights bottle feeding and caring for these mischievous otter pups so I can attest that sea otter moms have their work cut out for them!
All of the otter pups I've helped raise were deemed non-releasable by federal agencies such as the Department of Fisheries Canada and the NOAA in the US because they lacked the skills to survive in the wild. In the ocean, sea otter pups will stay with their moms for around 6 months. These otter moms teach their pups certain skills, like how to use tools to crack open shellfish, that are necessary to survive in the wild.