Can You Get an Otter as a Pet
These Otters Are Popular Pets in Asia. That May Be Their Undoing.
Asian small-clawed otters are increasingly popular as novelty pets, particularly in Japan. At present international merchandise in the species may exist banned.
TOKYO — Nosotros smelled them earlier we saw them. Amidst an overwhelming reek of urine and scat, we descended a tight staircase into a cramped basement, where tattered ottomans faced a small wire muzzle.
Within the cage stood the star attractions and source of the olfactory property: iv Asian small-clawed otters. Spotting u.s.a., the animals burst into chirps, whimpers, shrieks and screams.
After passing around a laminated sheet with warnings printed in Japanese, Mandarin and English ("Otters sometimes become trigger-happy"), a handler opened the cage. The animals bolted out and flew virtually the room, racing over laps and gobbling down kibbles.
Their tubular brown bodies felt like slick, furry throw pillows, and their animated, whisker-framed faces were similar those of puppies. Selfies proved difficult: Throughout our 30-minute session, the otters never stopped moving.
Otters are smelly, loud and extremely active; they have precipitous teeth and jaws strong enough to cleft open shellfish. But in Japan, where more than a dozen beast cafes at present characteristic otters, they accept become sought-after exotic pets, displacing owls, deadening lorises, sugar gliders and star tortoises.
Many cafes and pet shops sell otters to anyone interested in taking one home. "We're seeing a rapid increase in need as the popularity of keeping otters as pets keeps growing," a buffet attendant told our group. "Simply the supply isn't catching up."
Paradigm
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Pet otters aren't simply large in Nihon. They likewise are increasingly common in Republic of indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The net has largely driven the exponential increase in their popularity and trade as pets, said Nicole Duplaix, a conservation biologist at Oregon State University and co-chairwoman of the otter committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
"Sellers annunciate online, and pet owners mail service countless cute pictures of their little otter, which spreads the news that otters make wonderful pets, which they don't," Dr. Duplaix said.
Where are all of these pets coming from? Otters are difficult to brood in captivity without proper techniques. Many conservationists believe that the majority of animals sold as pets are captured in the wild.
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In Thailand, a number of Japanese citizens accept been arrested later they were caught trying to smuggle otters through airport security. In Vietnam, Salve Vietnam'due south Wild fauna, a nonprofit arrangement that rehabilitates animals confiscated from traffickers, has begun receiving otters for the first time in the group's 14-twelvemonth history. The police delivered 10 otters to the group in November alone.
Threatened smoothen-coated otters and endangered hairy-nosed otters, both found in Southeast Asia, are sometimes caught up in the pet merchandise. Only Asian small-scale-clawed otters, a "terminally cute" threatened species, tend to be the primary targets for poachers, Dr. Duplaix said.
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All three species were in trouble long before the pet trade began. Pollution and development have destroyed their habitats, and fishermen and aquaculture farmers kill the animals to remove competition. Poachers also target otters for their skins, which are usually sent to People's republic of china.
No ane knows exactly where or when the otter pet craze began, merely a number of experts believe information technology originated in Indonesia about five years ago, according to Vincent Nijman, an anthropologist at Oxford Brookes Academy in Britain.
Asian modest-clawed otters are not domestically protected in Indonesia, but all trade in unprotected wildlife is subject to a harvest quota, and there is no quota for otters. This makes their commercial trade illegal without a special permit, Dr. Nijman said.
"Nosotros now meet hundreds on offering on Facebook and Instagram, and none have permits," he added.
Otter owners in Indonesia ofttimes join "civet lover" groups, online communities for fans of small carnivores. Members get together to show off their animals, Dr. Nijman said, parading them down the street on leashes on Sundays in Djakarta, for example.
"On national news and online in Indonesia, this has been presented as something acceptable, fun, novel and heady," Dr. Nijman said. "It's for people who want something different than your normal true cat or dog."
In Thailand, trapping, selling or exporting otters is illegal, but the animals are freely traded online there, too. Penthai Siriwat, a doctoral candidate at Oxford Brookes Academy, monitored seven Thai-language Facebook pages from 2022 to early 2019, and found 572 individual animals for sale.
"It's just been increasing," she said. Over half the otters for sale in Thailand are litters of newborns that accept not yet opened their eyes, Ms. Siriwat reported in the Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity.
The residue are by and large juveniles weaned on cat food, which sellers merits are guaranteed to live and thus are more expensive.
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Epitome
Epitome
"Young otters are oftentimes taken from the wild while their mother is killed trying to defend her litter," said Paul Yoxon, caput of operations at the International Otter Survival Fund, a nonprofit group based in Scotland. "The fact that there are and then many newborns available also suggests that traders have no concern every bit to whether the animals survive or not."
The otter trade has spread from Thailand, most notably to Japan. According to Traffic Nihon, a grouping monitoring the illegal wild fauna merchandise, a popular tv series helped kick off the trend past featuring a pet otter. Social media stars followed up with videos of visits to otter cafes, some of which have gotten millions of views.
"The trouble with otters is that but normal people, even my friends, are now interested in keeping them as pets," said Yui Naruse, a researcher at Traffic Japan. "We have this cuteness culture that is actually deeply rooted in Japan, and that plays a strong role in this trend."
In 2018, Ms. Naruse and her colleagues conducted an online survey and found 85 otters for sale effectually Japan. Nearly half the retailers claimed that their animals were captive-bred in Japan.
But Ms. Naruse and her colleagues found no evidence of convict breeding in the country, strengthening their suspicion that otters are beingness smuggled in from abroad. (Japan's native otter subspecies was declared extinct in 2012.)
According to Traffic's research, seventy percent of otters seized in Southeast Asia in 2022 were destined for Nippon; government seized at to the lowest degree 39 otters coming into Japan or bound for the state from 2022 to 2017. In a widely publicized instance final Oct, a Tokyo district court prosecuted two men for smuggling v baby otters into Tokyo from Thailand.
Suspicious origins
Police were tipped off to the case by Yoshiaki Nagayasu, owner of Kotsumate, a popular otter buffet with branches in Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka. I of the smugglers had called Mr. Nagayasu, offer to sell him baby otters. Suspecting foul play, Mr. Nagayasu called the police.
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Speaking at his Tokyo cafe location, where walls are lined with autographed photos of Japanese YouTube and goggle box celebrities, Mr. Nagayasu said that his otters come from a breeding facility he founded in Malang, Indonesia, which he claimed received otters rescued from the illegal trade and bred them.
The strongest offspring are released into the wild, he said, and the residual are sent to Nihon, where Mr. Nagayasu sells them for more than $10,000 each. All profits go back to Republic of indonesia for facility maintenance and conservation of wild otters, he said.
"If we didn't do this business, all the otters you see here right now would probably be dead," Mr. Nagayasu said.
But on the ground at Kebun Alam Jaya, Mr. Nagayasu'due south facility in Indonesia, in that location is piffling bear witness of conservation, according to the Scorpion Wildlife Merchandise Monitoring Group, a nonprofit organization based in Medan, Republic of indonesia, and the International Otter Survival Fund.
"One of the workers at the facility told me they got otters from around the area, from the wild," said Gunung Gea, executive director of Scorpion.
Photographs taken past Mr. Gea show adult otters in tiny wire cages and cement pits defective adequate nest boxes in which to accept cubs. All of the animals appeared to accept been caught in the wild, according to Jason Palmer, curator of collections at New Forest Wild animals Park in Great britain and an adviser to the I.U.C.N.
"This identify looks very suspicious, like zilch more a belongings facility for animals for sale," Mr. Palmer said. "Zilch indicates a rescue and rerelease or breeding eye, and fifty-fifty if it did, the otters practise not accept the care or the environment to ensure they would survive in the wild."
Mr. Nagayasu said that he has paperwork proving that all of the adult otters in his facility are rescues that the Indonesian government seized from the illegal wildlife merchandise. He declined to share the paperwork with a reporter for The Times, referring her instead to the Indonesian government.
Indonesian government officials did not respond to requests for comment. According to Traffic's Southeast Asia part, Indonesia seized simply eight otters from 2022 to 2017. Mr. Gea counted xvi developed animals during his visit to Kebun Alam Jaya.
Mr. Nagayasu added that he legally imported his otters into Japan. Soon that may no longer be possible.
In May, international representatives will vote on whether to give brusk-clawed and smooth-coated otters the highest level of protection at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild animals and Flora (Cites).
If the proposals pass, international commercial merchandise of wild otters would be banned.
While increased protection nether Cites would be a benefaction for otters, information technology would non terminate the illegal merchandise, said Daniel Willcox, scientific discipline adviser to Save Vietnam's Wild fauna. Corruption and enforcement challenges create obstacles, enabling many species fully protected by Cites to still exist sold illegally.
"There'southward no way we can completely become rid of pet trade," Mr. Willcox said.
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Given that, Mr. Willcox believes that conservationists should endeavour to work direct with otter owners.
"In a canton like Vietnam, it's much better that people are keeping otters rather than eating them," Mr. Willcox said. "Some of these people actually care about their animals, and if we can find a way to engage with them to show them why keeping otters is wrong, they can become advocates for wildlife conservation."
Given a take a chance, otters and people still tin can coexist, even in crowded Southeast Asia, said Sivasothi N, a biologist at the National University of Singapore.
By the mid-1980s, Singapore's otters had disappeared because of pollution and evolution. Later on the nation began a cleanup campaign, the animals slowly returned.
Now, 11 otter families live on the island. Their 80-odd members do good from strictly enforced anti-poaching laws, Mr. Sivasothi said, and from widespread public support.
"In that location'southward something well-nigh otters moving together equally a family — squeaking, diving and catching fish — that really excites people," Mr. Sivasothi said. "Singaporeans are beginning to look at the water again."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/science/asia-otters-pets-japan.html
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