2023-12-07 07:58:01
CHICAGO (AP) — An eight-week-old calf from Alaska chirps loudly before devouring chunks of ice in the infirmary at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.
Short of a proper name, he is pup EL2306, a northern sea otter that was found alone and malnourished in the remote town of Seldovia in October and was taken to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.
Shedd, one of the few centers in the United States with resources to care for rescued otters, was contacted by SeaLife Center and the aquarium’s otter team crossed the country with the furry brown marine mammal, which arrived in Chicago in late November.
“Caring for an otter pup is like taking care of a baby,” including feeding it 24 hours a day, explained Lana Gonzalez, the Shedd’s otter and penguin manager. “Plus, you have to groom it. Sea otters have very dense fur. , with between 700,000 and a million hairs per square centimeter (inch), and that’s what they use to stay warm. They don’t have a thick layer of blubber like other marine mammals, so taking care of that fur is very important.”
An otter often teaches its young to groom itself, and the aquarium team has now taken on that role to encourage the healthy development of the young.
Otter supervisor Tracy Deakins entered the cub’s enclosure Wednesday with clean white towels and encouraged him to get out of the water. Deakins pointed to different spots on his fur and the cub responded by licking them or rubbing them with her claws.
The pup will remain in the center’s Regenstein sea otter infirmary for a few months, bonding with the staff, and will eventually move to the habitat where the aquarium’s other five otters are.
Part of the growth process is for them to transition from feeding formula and small pieces of clam to solid food. Gonzalez says the clams are “restaurant quality” and are sustainably sourced.
The federal government typically labels demure calves as non-releasable, and Shedd experts say they need their mothers during their first year of life.
“Once they are in our care we do not release them into the wild, they are too accustomed to people. But the good news is that he will be able to be an ambassador of his species here at the aquarium, so we are very happy regarding that,” Gonzalez said.
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