River otter spotted hopping around Metro Vancouver shoreline (VIDEO)
A sweet, little otter was captured on camera as it hopped around and played at Port Moody’s Rocky Point Park over the weekend.
Sarah Jayne Fitger was lucky enough to see the adorable animal looking for shells on the shoreline on Saturday afternoon.
She said the otter wandered on the sand before it hopped into the water, swam under the dock, and then swam off “to join his friends.”
Vancouver Aquarium’s marine mammal curator, Juliana Kirkelie-Kim, confirmed the animal Fitger filmed was a river otter.
She explained these mammals could be differentiated from sea otters because they have four paws instead of two paws and two flippers.
River otters also have slenderer bodies and shaped heads.
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“They have a lighter coloration on their ventral side and are more adaptive to moving on land than sea otters,” Kirkelie-Kim added. “Sea otters are more clumsy walking on land than river otters, due to those hind flippers.”
River otters also interact with sea otters and share the same food resources like crabs and mollusks. But unlike sea otters, river otters also eat different things like insects.
“People get surprised by this sometimes, but river otters that live near oceans do indeed swim in the ocean along beaches and shorelines,” Kirkelie-Kim added.