{"id":3276,"date":"2013-12-29T14:14:08","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-02-03T23:08:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T07:08:54","slug":"otters-beat-all-attackers-except-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2013\/12\/29\/otters-beat-all-attackers-except-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Otters Beat All Attackers Except Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Smooth-CoatedLast week, I was watching the great television series Planet Earth<\/i>, which is the only nature documentary series that I own. As far as I’m concerned, it is the best nature documentary yet made, and I think the producers knew that when they were making it. For one thing, they paid one nature photographer for three years<\/i> to get footage of the extremely rare snow leopard. And that’s just one example. A lot of money was spent on the series and got amazing video of things like a rare lion attack on an elephant, and an out-of-water great white shark attack on a seal, and a desperate polar bear attack on a walrus that left the bear mortally wounded.<\/p>\n

What’s perhaps most amazing about the whole Planet Earth<\/i> series is that the viewer doesn’t get the idea that it is good versus evil. I often found myself feeling bad for the predators as much as for the prey. For example, that polar bear only attacks the walrus because it is starving and desperate. The more you watch animals, the clearer it is just how smart they are. The bear is making a rational choice. It knows that it has little hope of success, but it has no better hand to play. And it is a tragedy, because not only does the bear die, it is very possible that the walrus’ wounds are such that it too dies.<\/p>\n

Since I was a kid, I have been really interested in otters. They are amazing animals. And their obvious playful habits make me think of them as self-actualizing in their own way. One thing about them, though, is that most of them are solitary creatures as adults. But that’s not true of all of them. As I learned from Planet Earth<\/i>, the smooth-coated otters from southern Asia live and hunt in groups. And as such, they are effectively the top predators in their environment. In the Planet Earth<\/i> episode “Fresh Water” they are shown harassing a mugger crocodile away. One is even seen biting the crocodile on its tail. One of the producers talks about how they do this kind of thing all the time<\/a>. Otters are seen riding on the backs of crocodiles; the otters know what the crocodiles can and can’t do. But above all, they know they are a threat that needs to be chased away. Here is some of the sequence:<\/p>\n