What are 3 facts about sea otters?

Answer 1

There are so many! Here is a sampling:

• Sea otters use tools! They have pouches under their armpits in which they store rocks. They use these rocks to crack open the shells of animals they eat. They also tie themselves up in kelp when they go to sleep so as not to drift out to sea.

• For a long time, California sea otters were thought to be extinct due to overhunting. Then a colony of 50 was discovered. All of the approximately 3000 California sea otters alive today descended from them.

• Sea otters are a keystone species in the kelp forest ecosystem. This means that if they were to disappear, the ecosystem would collapse.

• Sea otters have few natural predators. Sharks usually can only catch them if they're injured or sick. Recently, it is suspected that some orca whales in Alaska have also begun preying on sea otters.

• There are three major subspecies of sea otters: Californian (or Southern), Alaskan (or Northern), and Russian/Japanese.

• The California sea otter population is mysteriously not growing, despite models suggesting that it should be. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, but none have been confirmed.

• If people flush cat litter down a toilet, toxoplasmosis parasites can infect sand crabs. Because of insufficient food availability, sea otters have been eating sand crabs. This has lead to otters being weakened by toxoplasmosis infections.

• Because sea otters don't have blubber, they depend on their fur and fast metabolisms to keep warm. Consequently, they spend about 1/3 of their day grooming and eat about 1/4 of their body weight daily. They are so heat efficient that they have adapted to use the heat created by digesting their food (thermic effect) to warm themselves up.

• It only takes two tablespoons of oil to mess up a sea otter's coat to the point where it can't keep the otter warm enough to survive.

Sea otters are awesome! Protect them!

Answer 2

They spend as much as 48% of their day grooming their fur.

Answer 3

they can hold there breath for four minutes.