THE SEA OTTER.[192]
SIDE VIEW OF SKULL OF SEA OTTER. (After Coues.)
SIDE VIEW OF SKULL OF SEA OTTER. (After Coues.)
This interesting animal differs in many important respects from the Common Otter, and in all such points shows an approximation to the structure of the Seals. It is a large animal, about three feet long, not counting the tail, which is about a foot more. Its fur is dark brown, both on the upper and lower surfaces, and presents a frosted or silvered appearance, owing to the fact that the long stiff hairs, which differ greatly from those of the under-fur, are grey or colourless at the tip. The head is very short, the snout naked; the eyes extremely small, and placed low down on the sides of the head, and the whiskers are short, but stout and stiff, and mostly directed downwards; altogether there is something very Seal-like about the face. The fore-limbs and feet are small, the paws rather Cat-like in their rounded form, and the claws are quite hidden by the hair. The hind feet, on the other hand, are flat and expanded, being no less than six inches long by four broad, and webbed like a Duck’s feet, or a Seal’s flippers; they differ, however, from the Seal’s, in the fact that the toes increase in length from the inner to the outer side; both above and below they are covered with dense fur, which quite hides the short, stout claws. The skull is, both in its cranial and facial portions, much shorter in comparison with its width than in the ordinary Otters; its base is extremely broad, and both upper and lower jaws bear on each side only eight teeth, so that there are altogether thirty-two teeth, or four less than in the Common Otter.[193]This diminution in number is brought about, as will be seen from the formula below, by reducing the upper premolars from four to three, and the lower incisors from three to two on each side. The form of the grinders differs altogether from what we have found, not only in the Mustelidæ, but in all the Land Carnivores. Their grinding surfaces present no sharp cusps, or jagged cutting edges, as in most Carnivorous forms; neither are they provided with numerous small tubercles and ridges, as in the Bears; but the surface of each is raised into a small number of rounded eminences, reminding one of the “roches moutonnées” of a glacial district, or, as Dr. Coues remarks, differing from the teeth of ordinary Carnivores, as water-worn pebbles differ from fresh-chipped angular pieces of rock.
UNDER VIEW OF SKULL OF SEA OTTER. (After Coues.)
UNDER VIEW OF SKULL OF SEA OTTER. (After Coues.)
The Sea Otter is found in the North Pacific, chiefly in the regions of Kamstchatka and Alaska, and extends as far south as California.
Like the Seal, the Sea Otter is gregarious, being often found “in bands numbering from fifty up to hundreds. When in rapid movement, they make alternate undulating leaps out of the water,plunging again as do Seals and Porpoises. When in a state of quietude, they are much of the time on their backs. They are frequently seen in this posture, with the hind flippers extended, as if catching the breeze to sail or drift before it. They live on Clams, as well as Crabs and other species of Crustacea; sometimes small fish. When the Otter descends and brings up any article of food, it instantly resumes its habitual attitude on the back to devour it. On sunny days, when looking, it sometimes shades its eyes with one fore paw, much in the same manner as a person does with the hand.”[194]This curious habit, as we have seen, is adopted also by the Glutton. The supine position is so habitual that the females actually sleep in the water on their backs, with the young ones clasped between their fore paws. While in this position, too, the Otter will toss a piece of sea-weed backwards and forwards from paw to paw, like a ball, and the mother play with her offspring for hours together.
The fur is very valuable, and the animal is consequently hunted regularly; so regularly, that there is every possibility of the species becoming speedily extinct unless some check is put upon the chase. For taking some action in the matter, there is the further reason that the natives of the Aleutian Isles, the chief resort of the animal, are dependent on its hunting for their subsistence, and it has been shown that the people have diminished in numbers coincidently with the Otters.
“There are four principal methods of capturing the Sea Otter, namely, bysurf-shooting, byspearing-surrounds, byclubbing, and bynets.”
FEMALE SEA OTTER SWIMMING ON HER BACK WITH YOUNG IN HER ARMS. (After Steller.)
FEMALE SEA OTTER SWIMMING ON HER BACK WITH YOUNG IN HER ARMS. (After Steller.)
“The surf-shooting is the common method, but has only been in vogue among the natives a short time. The young men have nearly all been supplied with rifles, with which they patrol the shores of the island and inlets, and whenever a Sea Otter’s head is seen in the surf, a thousand yards out even, they fire, the great distance and the noise of the surf preventing the Sea Otter from taking alarm until it is hit; and in nine times out of ten, when it is hit in the head, which is all that is exposed, the shot is fatal, and the hunter waits until the surf brings his quarry in, if it is too rough for him to venture out in his ‘bidarkie.’ This shooting is kept up now the whole year round.
“The spearing-surround is the orthodox native system of capture, and reflects the highest credit upon them as bold, hardy watermen. A party of fifteen or twenty bidarkies with two men in each, as a rule, all under the control of a chief elected by common consent, start out in pleasant weather, or when it is not too rough, and spread themselves over a long line, slowly paddling over the waters where the Sea Otters are most usually found. When any one of them discovers an Otter asleep, most likely, in the water, he makes a quiet signal, and there is not a word spoken or a paddle splashed while they are on the hunt. He darts towards the animal, but generally the alarm is taken by the sensitive object, which instantly dives before the Aleut can get near enough to throw his spear. The hunter, however, keeps right on, and stops his canoe directly over the spot where the Otter disappeared. The others, taking note of the position, all deploy and scatter in a circle of half a mile wide round the point of departure thus made, and patiently wait for the re-appearance of the Otter, which must take place within fifteen or thirty minutes, for breath; and as soon as this happens the nearest one to it darts forward in the same manner as his predecessor, when all hands shout and throw their spears, to make the animal dive again as quickly as possible, thus giving it scarcely an instant to recover itself. A sentry is placed on its second diving-wake as before, and the circle is drawn anew;and the surprise is often repeated, sometimes for two or three hours, until the Sea Otter, from interrupted respiration, becomes so filled with air or gases that he cannot sink, and becomes at once an easy victim.
“The clubbing is only done in the winter season, and then at infrequent intervals, which occur when tremendous gales of wind from the northward, sweeping down over Saanach, have almost blown themselves out. The natives, the very boldest of them, set out from Saanach, and scud down on the tail of the gale to the far outlying rocks, just sticking out above surf-wash, where they creep up from the leeward to the Sea Otters found there at such times, with their heads stuck into the beds of kelp to avoid the wind. The noise of the gale is greater than that made by the stealthy movements of the hunters, who, armed with a short, heavy, wooden club, dispatch the animals one after another without disturbing the whole body, and in this way two Aleuts, brothers, were known to have slain seventy-eight in less than an hour and a half.”
SEA OTTER.
SEA OTTER.
The nets used by the Atka and Attore Aleuts “are from sixteen to eighteen feet long, and six to ten feet wide, with coarse meshes made nowadays of twine, but formerly of sinew. On the kelp-beds these nets are spread out, and the natives withdraw and watch. The Otters come to sleep or rest on these places, and get entangled in the meshes of the nets, seeming to make little or no effort to escape, paralysed, as it were, by fear, and fall in this way easily into the hands of the trappers, who have caught as many as six at one time in one of these small nets, and frequently get three.... No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the Sea Otters, strong animals as they are; only stray Sea Lions destroy them.... The salt water and kelp seem to act as a disinfectant to the net, so that the smell of it does not repel or alarm the shy animal.”[195]