Behavior, scat notes and rare video -evidence

Today we meet the most frequent member of the Weasel family of Costa Rica, the Neotropical River Otter. The Neotropic River Otter (Lontra Longicaudis) is known as the Nutria or Perro de Agua In Spanish. There is another animal species that is known as Nutria in English. It looks like a mixture between a rat and a beaver and is native to South America. Every time I use the term, it puts it in my eye. I asked real estate owners where I worked when they heard about it and nobody has, so the term is apparently a bit confusing for me.

Neotropical River Otters are one of seven members of the Weasel family who can be found in Costa Rica and are closest to water. Your streamline body is perfectly designed for your aquatic environment. Her long tail and bed beds – feet quickly drive them through water. Your brown coat consists of two different types of fur. The outer layer is longer and oily, which does not get wet the inner layer of the insulating from Unterfur.

As you can imagine, there is a great percentage of your diet of creatures that live under water. The neotropical river otter to keep your breath away for up to eight minutes mainly hunt fish and crustaceans. After a fill meal, these otter do their shops on prominent rocks or tree trunks along the waterways where they live. This scat is an ideal way for researchers to dissect their diet.

Most studies have shown that, although they eat things like mollusken, frogs and invertebrate aquatic animals, the vast majority of their diet consists of a variety of fish and fresh water shrimp. I recently accidentally leaned on a bunch of Otter Scat when I pulled myself on a large rock on the side of a stream and had to pull a few fish bones out of the palm. A more precise inspection of the scat showed that it consisted entirely of fish scales and bones.

The neotropic riverter have a large reach worldwide, which is found from northwest -Mexico to central arguments. At some point in history they were found in large parts of Costa Rica, but the loss of habitats and a history of hunting have called for their toll. Nowadays they are limited to areas with large spots of undisturbed habitats with non -dirty waterways.

During my time in Costa Rica, I was very lucky to document the neotropic river voters. I've never seen one with my own eyes. I only took them seven times with my camera traps, a few times in OSA and a few times in the north Guanacast. In the past two weeks I have with a scientist named Dr. Christopher worked together colorful to install an underwater camera trap in Guanacaste.

We installed the camera next to the rock, where I accidentally hit my hand in Boney Otter Poop. So I hope that these otter will return and I will add some underwater shots to my Otter video collection. Up to this day I can only share a few clips of my seven Otter camera -Trap videos.

Post -script

Everything in the above article was true at the time of writing, but between the day I sent it and was now a fantastic luck in the Otter department. First I saw a neotropical river Otter personally, twice in the same small river, where I installed the underwater camera trap. Second, the otter I saw was recorded a few times from the underwater camera trap. Fortunately, the article was not published immediately, so I had the time to add the new underwater clips to the video below. Enjoy!

About the author

Vincent Losasso, founder of Guanacaste Wildlife Monitoring, is a biologist who works with camera traps throughout Costa Rica