River otters in the Finger Lakes

This is a long one, so get comfortable!

January 11, 2013

Today I had the pleasure of accompanying a past professor of mine from Finger Lakes Community College (John), and a current Biotechnology student (Will) on a tramp through the woods. We were at the Hi Tor Wildlife Management Area in Italy Valley, NY. The goal: to find a river otter (Lontra canadensis) latrine site.

Some brief natural history about the river otter: they are in the weasel family (Mustelidae) along with wolverines and badgers (which do not live in NY), fishers, martens, mink, short/long-tailed weasels, and least weasels. They’re all very long-bodied, veracious hunters and fighters, and they all contain a scent gland that leaves behind a very musky scent. Weasels are smelly, but I love them! Around 12ish years ago, river otters were locally extirpated in the Finger Lake region. They could still be found in pockets in the Adirondacks and perhaps the Catskills. The DEC, along with private monies, collected and live-trapped otters from these regions. They were then rehabilitated, vaccinated, fattened up, and then released at various areas all over the Finger Lakes. It’s ONE example of an animal trapped and releases in another area that was a success story. Over the past decade +, the river otters have been coming back in force. There is not a season for trapping allowed, because it has not been determined that they are THAT stable, but they’re back. There have been live and sign sightings, incidental trappings, and roadkills found all over the region. Oh, and what’s a latrine? It’s also referred to as a “toilet” site. The otters (and some other critters) will defecate and urinate in the same spot over and over. This is a territorial marking behavior.

There is a study going on currently out of the Environmental School of Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse that hopes to document where the otter are, a potential abundance of them, and then “who” is around. Camera traps are being used, as well as scat samples are being taken so that DNA work can be done to determine the “who” or genetic variation. Much of the camera-trapping has begun over the summer of 2012, and not much work (to my knowledge) has been done in the lab working on scat samples.

Will, the biotech student from FLCC, is assisting in the scat collection. Since these easily-accessible latrines were found, and he lives nearby, he and others will be monitoring the area for fresh scats. John knew the location, and so off we went.

Our destination location: River Otter Pond

 As we approached the pond, we made sure to keep quiet. The last time John had visited the pond, he observed an otter on the shore. We hoped that this would be the case again today. Well, we were NOT disappointed! After a short 2-3 minutes of standing still and scanning the ice, I spotted a little head pop out of an ice hole that the otters were breathing at. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures to share of that sighting, but we counted 3! Below is a picture of the ice hole, with tracks leading to/from it.

In the top picture, I'm standing on the side of the pond we first approached, and that is the view 

I watched the otters at. The arrow is the ice hole. The bottom picture is across the other side of the 

pond, looking back in the direction I originally was. The ice hole is much easier to see from here.

The sighting was VERY cool for me. Weasels in general are very intelligent and wary critters. They are curious, but quick. We were able to sneak up undetected and catch a glimpse of them acting naturally and doing “otter stuff”. It was amazing, and yet ANOTHER confirmation that I’m in the right field of study and work! After watching the otters until they went back under the ice, we set to work looking for the 2 otter latrine sites that were known to be at the pond’s edge.

The first location was easily spotted. There was otter scat in abundance.

Otter latrine site #1. Notice the entrance/exit hole at left.

Otter scat is easy to identify, in my opinion. Because their primary diet consists of fish, and invertebrates like crayfish, the scales and exoskeletons are found in the scat, because it’s too tough to digest. See below.

Note the scales and delicate fish bones in the scat.

Will collecting scat samples.

Will is looking to determine which method of preservation will best keep the integrity of the scat. Once it is expelled from the body, the scat is decomposing, thus the DNA is breaking up. Since the work to determine the genetics of the scat can't be done in the field, it must be preserved until lab time. Will is trying no preservative (L), a chemical I don't remember (M), and ethanol (R). Then all samples will be frozen until he's ready to work in the lab.

Once Will took what he needed from this location, we hiked over to the other side of the pond. Still no sign of the otters.

On this side of the pond, John knew for sure there was a latrine site. He actually visited this exact spot the last time he was here, and he deployed a Cuddeback Attack IR camera at the site. Bound to get otters, right?

The Cuddeback Attack's view of the latrine site.

Success! Two river otters in a 'slide'. This is a behavior otters often do, to get from point A to point B. 

Photo credit: John Van Niel

AND TRIPLE SUCCESS! 3 otters this time! Is this the 3 otters that we saw earlier? Regardless, what an awesome capture. Photo credit: John Van Niel

Total success! The grad student in charge of the overall project is going to be so excited when she sees the site and the pictures.

Lastly, after Will took his samples he did one last thing. The grad student I just mentioned, Elaina, will be visiting this spot in the future to check it out, and to collect samples. Another thing you can do to make sure that you have a good scat sample, is to get the freshest possible. Well, how do you know if the poop is fresh? Sight? Smell? Texture? Gross.

Well, you can glitterize it!

Sprinkling glitter on the scat will tell Elaina which is freshest. Tomorrow, when she visits,
she'll know that any 'unglittered' scat is less than 24 hours old.

Pretty!

This latrine site was huge. Probably 8 feet wide and absolutely covered...with poop.

What a wonderful day. I know to many, this seems like a bizarre thing to be interested in and to get excited about. But seeing the otters was a total chance, yet sign left behind is much easier and common to observe, and can tell us so much about the lives of these amazing animals.

I will soon have a blog entry or 2 about Otter’s cousin, Fisher. Another fascinating wild animal!

PS- for John's take of the day, check out his blog Backyard Beasts: All that glitters is not gold, sometimes it's otter poop.

A Natural History Mystery!

Earlier this week I visited FLCC's Muller Field Station as often mentioned in earlier posts. Some friends and I enjoyed an early morning hike along the channel path to enjoy nature and set some camera traps.

Muller Field Station - channel path 2/1/12

Along the way we found a very interesting type of mammal sign. Specifially a river otter latrine site! I took a Wetland Mammals course at the field station in the fall of 2010. We learned all about, ironically, mammals that live in wetlands: the beaver, river otter, mink, and muskrat.

Photo credit: Roosevelt Wild Life Station at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

If I refer to river otter as just 'otter', please keep that in mind :)

Otter make latrine sites for perhaps several reasons, but what is most commonly KNOWN is that it is an area that is heavily marked. The otters spend alot of their time in the water, but they're not totally aquatic. When they emerge from the water, they like an area adjacent to the water that is relatively vegetation-free. They return to this spot over and over to leave behind their scat and scent, which is that otter's calling card. The otters deposit scent by rolling, sliding, and scatting (is that a verb?!) again and again in the same location .

As you can see there's lots of space for otters a-rompin' and a-rollin' around. I set a camera trap on the site hoping for good results. Unfortunately, nothing to report. Granted the camera was only out for 4 days, but I was hoping we'd have a good chance of snapping the pic of an otter. This day we visited, we found an abundance of FRESH sign. We deemed it fresh because the scat looked succulent, moist, and had volume to it rather than it being washed out and flat looking.

Please know that this scat really isn't blue, it just looks it in the image because I was tweaking the colors. I'm all about imagery, so here's a good way to compare otter scat, if you've never seen it, to something that you can imagine: gray, cooked oatmeal. This day was very overcast, foggy, dreary, and the image came out very washed out, so that's why I tried to bring the color back. You can definetely see the texture in the scat which is a testament to the otter's diet: fish, crustaceans, amphibians, and any other macro-invertebrates they can get their jaws on. Lot's of scales, bones, shells, and exoskeletons.

And this lovely stuff is referred to by several names: puke pile, otter jelly, and my favorite: anal jelly.

THIS is the Natural History Mystery I mentioned in the title. There seems to be some debate over which end this slime comes from. In my opinion, after learning about this from my professor John who spent a week in British Columbia working with an otter biologist collecting this stuff, other naturalists who work with otter, reading TONS of literature and then finally, observing captive otters at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY...I would say that this jelly is more anal than oral.

So now that I've isolated it to the hind region of the otter, there's another question: does it come from anal scent glands OR does it come from the anus? I think it comes from the anus, and here's why: in my Wetland Mammals class, we did a necropsy on a road-killed otter, and found a similar looking substance in its lower digestive tract. The theory is that it helps to aid the digestion of all that hard stuff and lubricating it through the digestive system.

There's alot of debate out there, but there is one thing we can assume about this otter jelly: it happens for a specific reason. There are no random happenings in nature.

Anyway, that's my brief blog entry on otters and scat and latrine sites. I am behind at least 2 entries, so hopefully I'll find time the rest of this weekend to get them out there before my school week starts again!

Myself and the 19lb road-killed river otter during Wetland Mammals!