When sea otters lose their favorite foods, ... Tool users had less dental damage. That's a big deal because an otter with bad teeth can't really eat anything.

Item 1 of 5 A sea otter stands as another sea otter emerges from water, at the Aquarium of the Pacific, in Long Beach, California, U.S., April 11, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni ...

They were nearly wiped out by hunting for the fur trade in the 19th century. By the early 1900s, all that was left of the southern sea otter subspecies was a few dozen animals along the Big Sur coast.

Conservation efforts have helped the population of sea otters begin to recover, and studies show that their returned presence to California marshland has slowed erosion there.

There are only about 3,000 southern sea otters ... population would have disappeared for good had a raft of a few dozen not eluded the slaughter off the rocky coast of Big Sur. Today the otter ...

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Relocating sea otters to places in Northern California and Oregon where they haven’t lived for generations, including possibly using helicopter rides to move a few dozen ...

Sea otters living in San Francisco Bay wouldn't be a new thing, Sonoma State's news site explains. They used to live in large numbers off the California coast, before the fur trade drove them to ...

Some otters rely on tools to bust open hard-shelled prey items like snails, and a new study suggests this tool use is helping them to survive as their favorite, easier-to-eat foods disappear.

Lastly, the Asian sea otter (Enhydra lutris lutris) is listed as Endangered and is the rarest subspecies of sea otter. There are only around 2,000 individuals left in the wild.

The southern sea otter was widely believed to be extinct due to the expansive fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, which reduced the global population from between 150,000 and 300,000 to roughly ...