World Otter Day

It’s World Otter Day! What could be cuter? I love watching otters at the zoo as they literally zoom around their enclosure. In fact, in honor of World Otter Day, I’m going to share some really interesting facts about otters that I learned just for today.

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• Sea otters have the thickest fur of any animal with 600,000 to 1,000,000 hair follicles per square inch! They don’t have blubber, so sea otters spend much of their time maintaining these luxurious coats.
• There are thirteen different otter species – although, in the United States, we’ll only see two varieties – sea otters and North American river otters.
• A group of resting otters is called a raft because they often wrap themselves in seaweed in a large group creating a sort of raft.
• Otters are considered a “keystone” species. This is an animal that is critical to its ecosystem.

For more interesting facts about otters, check out the U.S. Department of the Interior!

And I can’t very well leave you with just a few cute otter photos and facts, can I? Of course not! Here are a handful of otter-ly (see what I did there?) adorable books about otters!

World Otter Day Book List

• Do Unto to Otters by Laurie Keller
• I Am Otter by Sam Garton
• If You Take Away the Otter by Susannah Burman-Deever, illustrated by Matthew Trueman
• I Love You Like No Otter by Rose Rossner, illustrated by Sydney Hanson
• Otters Love to Play by Jonathan London, illustrated by Meilo So
• Sea Otters by Laura Marsh
• Stop Snoring, Bernard! by Zachariah Ohora
• Together by Emma Dodd
• Utterly Otterly Day by Mary Casanova, illustrated by Ard Hoyt

For more great otter books, check out Bookroo!