Hannah
Consider all the otter facts you know: they’re very cute, love to play, extremely great bellies, etc. But what if I told you that there was so much more hiding under that adorable surface? It turns out otters are borderline evil and I’m fully stacked with otter facts to prove it to you.
1. Forced sex.
Sea otters are generally violent and aggressive when mating. Some otters hold the female’s heads underwater during intercourse to force submission. Some otters even die after intercourse from trauma.
2. Forced interspecies sex.
Yeah, that’s right. They also force sex with other species. Male sea otters will force sex with baby harbor seals and the seals often die as a result. The size difference alone between the animals is enough to cause perforation in their naughty bits.
3. They’re necrophiliacs.
Sea otters don’t let death hold them back from going to pound town. They will hang on to a dead otter and continue to rape its corpse. One study saw a male sea otter hold a struggling female underwater until she died during intercourse and ten months later, the same otter was seen swimming, diving, and having sex with a different female carcass. I’m dead serious.
4. Giant otters are 5.6 feet.
Otters are generally considered to be small and fluffy animals, but there are 11 other species of otter. The giant otter of South America can grow up to 5.6 feet from snout to toe. Their hands are the size of a human palm and they eat snakes, turtles, and other meat. Pretty cool, pretty terrifying.
5. They’re murderers.
You might try to convince yourself that many animals exhibit dangerous sexual behaviors to forgive the otter, but otters also seem to kill other animals just for fun. In 2016, the Bronx Zoo opened a “JungleWorld” exhibit which contained Asian small-clawed otters and Javan Lutung monkeys. A video from the exhibit shows a monkey standing too close to the edge of the water and a group of otters drag him in, smothering and drowning him. There were similar reports at a zoo in the UK when otters killed and ate an endangered golden lion tamarin monkey after it fell into a pond. Pretty uncool, otters.
