The Thinker
Sea otters can be fairly ingenious, doing things like using rocks to hammer away at shellfish. In fact, the animals will use just about any hard surface to break open dinner, including boat hulls and aquarium glass.
See What Sea Otters Do When No One's Looking
They nap, groom themselves, and look for food. They're also adorable. But life isn’t all surf and sun for these endangered sea otters.
It's not hard to drum up love for sea otters with their furry little paws, inquisitive expressions, and playful demeanor. But despite the attention and money lavished on this marine mammal, they still have a long way to go.
Campaigns such as the current Sea Otter Awareness Week—which runs from September 20 to 26—aim to help people see past the adorable surface of a sea otter and into the deeper conservation issues these animals face.
The fur trade decimated sea otter populations starting in the 1700s, eventually exterminating them from most of their historic range. They once stretched from Japan through Russia across to Alaska and down into Baja California.
By the early 1900s, the sea otter was thought to
