Wild Side： Buttercup the otter pup is here to brighten your day

Welcome back, time for another edition of The Wild Side. We got Kiana Lucero from Tanganyika here, as well as a very special guest. Who's this young lady? Yeah, this is Buttercup. She is an Asian small-clawed otter. She was not born at Tanganyika, but she has lived with us since she was about three months old. She's four and a half months old now, so she still has some growing to do. She's gonna get to be probably about two-thirds this size bigger, so she's gonna get a little bit bigger. Our goal for her is to be able to have her as one of our otter swim otters. So we did just open a whole new building at Tanganyika. We do have some of her older siblings that are starting to do those swims, but hopefully as she gets a little bit older, she'll be able to be joining us in those swims as well. Now you say siblings, so some of her blood relatives are there? Yes, yeah, she has five siblings. She's from a different litter than them, so she's a little bit younger. But yeah, we have some of her siblings at the park as well, five of them actually. My gosh, is this young lady cute. And tell me a little bit more about Asian small-clawed otters. What makes them unique? Absolutely, they are the smallest otter species in the entire world. So I think that makes them extra cute because they're teeny tiny. Oh, that was a big piece of fish there. They're also the most terrestrial of the otter species, or land-based otters. So they do go into the water, especially to find food and cool off on a warm day, but they're gonna spend a lot of time on land. If you are able to look at her little fingernails down there, that's how they get the name short-clawed because they've got this tiny little fleck of a fingernail. And so she's gonna use that to be able to wiggle her way or her hands down into little crevices and rocks and things and find food. So she loves to eat shrimp, that's what she's getting right now. She'll also eat fish, but they really love crustaceans like crabs and crawdads that she's gonna find in those little crevices in the rocks. Fantastic. It looks like she's getting one heck of a lunch right now. She sure is. Enjoy yourself. Look at that. Look at them chompers. She is speaking my language. Now, you can see the otters at Tanganyika. This young lady still has a little bit of developing to do, but tell me more about the otter experience. Yeah, it's super fun. We have a couple otter things that we offer. We do do a meet and greet with some of our older otters where you get to hang out with them, get some pictures with them, do some training with them. And then we just started our otter swims. So for that one, you actually get to get into our brand new pools that we just built for our otter swims and get to hang out with them, swim around, hang out on land with them. It's a really cool, very interactive experience and we're very excited about that one. Well, that is wonderful. And before we let you go, tell us, there's a lot more than just cute otters over at Tanganyika. What other events do you have coming up as the weather warms up? Yeah, we officially opened on Saturday. So we've been open for a couple days now. We're really enjoying the weather the rest of this week and having everyone come out to the park. So yeah, we're just getting into full swing of opening and ready to have everyone come out to the park and do all of our experiences with us. Beautiful, and of course, if swimming with otters aren't your thing, maybe take a dip with the penguins over at Tanganyika. Don't go anywhere, little one. All right. We appreciate you both stopping by and we'll be right back. Bye.