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She Steals Surfboards by the Seashore. She’s a Sea Otter
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- johnea 3y agoI think surfrider foundation should just gift that otter a board...
- nomel 3y agoI wonder if that could help it "get bored" of surfboards.
- johnea 3y agoSomehow I doubt it, most humans seem to stay interested even after having their own... But it might not be so determined to steal them from otherss...
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoThe right number of surfboards to acquire, much like the acquisition of bicycles or classic ThinkPads, is N-1, where N is the number at which either your spouse kicks you out or the DNR stabs you with a tranquilizer dart and relocates you to a remote shoreline.
- speed_spread 3y agoAlso applies to synthesizers and guitars, which otters don't steal (yet)
- CameronNemo 3y agoYeah a nice traditional redwood board.
- mcpackieh 3y agoOtter gets habituated by humans feeding it. Researchers capture the otter and it loses even more fear of humans. Researchers release the otter, and now plan to capture and interact with it again because it isn't afraid of humans. I presume it will become even more habituated to humans after researchers recapture it. Wouldn't this problem sort itself out if a few kayakers gave the otter some harmless smacks with their paddles to instill a little fear?
- ddalcino 3y agoThat will just make her mad. Then she’ll steal your kayak.
- rowborg 3y agoThe article indicates that it was 841's mother who was likely fed by humans. 841 was born in captivity and care was taken to prevent human association: The pup was raised by her mother until she was weaned, then moved to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. To bolster her chances for success upon release, 841’s caretakers took measures to prevent the otter from forming positive associations with humans, including wearing masks and ponchos that obscured their appearance when they were around her.
- Aloha 3y agoI'd guess this is how domestication happens, over generations. It kinda fits my understanding of domestication.
- totalconfusion 3y agoHighly recommend this radio show if this is something you're interested in. https://radiolab.org/podcast/new-nice https://radiolab.org/podcast/new-nice
- darkclouds 3y agoDomesticated animals all have smaller brains, perhaps because they dont have to think for themselves, they just do what they get told. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0813 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.081... "Nearly all domestic animals have been shown to have smaller brains than their wild counterparts [1–7]. Those that are most important to humans, mostly for consumption or companionship, display the greatest amount of reduction. These include pigs (approx. 34%) [8] and sheep (approx. 24%) [2], and dogs (approx. 29%) [3] and cats (approx. 24%) [3], whose brains reduce more than twice as much as those of other domestics" "Bullfighting cattle, which are bred for fighting and aggressive temperament, have much larger brains than dairy breeds, which are intensively selected for docility." So if you are aggressive and violent, you have a bigger brain, but does brain size correlate to intelligent? Maybe the recent musk v zuck is an indication of throwing off those social constraints. Either way, the state stating they have to kill the otter would mean this is a smart otter not fearful of predators like humans. Interesting that hormones are also cited for the increased aggression, is the oestrogen choline pathways giving the otter ideas?
- zgluck 3y agoI'm sure it was cute the first couple of times... Some animals have this way of doing things over and over for a very long time, for many days. It's not cute at day 155.
- johnea 3y agoI would expect the other animals feel that same way about the autistic primates taking over pretty much everything...
- im_down_w_otp 3y agoI feel like there’s a real missed opportunity here to lean on this particular otter’s gene pool to breed the seafaring version of St. Bernard alpine rescue dogs. Though it’s also possible I’ve watched too much Octonauts with my kids.
- jojobas 3y agoWith this one's genes it's more likely to be an anti-St.Bernard, stalking down surfers and putting them in peril by stealing their boards.
- jacquesm 3y agoIn tech bro terms it is just trying to acquire resources necessary for expansion of the business in the interest of creating shareholder value.
- darkwater 3y agoUpvoted for the Octonauts mention. Creature's report, creature's report.
- roter 3y agoYou mean like a Newfie [0]? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_dog
- adolph 3y agoThis and the recent orca stories have made me wonder about animal meta-learning: the mental processes that go into motivating, succeeding and sustaining non-instinctual behaviors. Clearly different kinds of animals can be trained to behave in certain ways. Is it possible to train an animal to train other animals?
- Terr_ 3y agoI sometimes wonder how much "animal culture" might exist in the wild that we are somehow missing, simply because it doesn't survive the transplant to environments where we can do detailed studies. (Either because the environment itself is so strange it gets disrupted, or how the individual animals were rescued/abducted/raised and introduced, etc.) For example, what all if those notoriously-non-reproducing zoo pandas just... didn't get the right bad-influences when they were growing up? Some zoos have even attempted to use panda-porn to address the issue.
- BirAdam 3y agoI had a pet chinchilla once. I got him after he finished what amounts to chinchilla school. The breeder explained to me that she can’t immediately separate a chinchilla after it starts eating normal food as it needs to be taught to bathe, chew, and other chinchilla things by the older chinchillas. There can definitely be animal culture, and from what I have observed most animals have some level it. I find that humans give ourselves way too much credit. We may be smarter, but I don’t think it’s by all that much really… just that the last bit of smarts makes a rather large impact.
- adolph 3y agoThat is fascinating and reminds me now of bird rescue training where the human gets in costume and flies an ultralight to train migratory behavior. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/ultralights-are-birds https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/ultralights-are...
- Apocryphon 3y ago
- metadat 3y agohttps://archive.today/bREsi https://archive.today/bREsi
- squarefoot 3y agoSome animals learn to use tools to solve problems, for example crows [0]. What if that otter was just using the board to travel longer distances (=> finding more food) by keeping nearby a safer place to rest on? 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04
- operatingthetan 3y ago>If a human should be bitten, the state has no choice but to euthanize the otter. That's pretty gross. I'm sure there are ways around that, especially for an endangered species.
- voakbasda 3y agoIf the State does not euthanize it after a bite, they could be found liable if someone gets bitten again. There’s also the question of rabies, the detection of which requires examination of the brain tissue.
- nradov 3y agoIt's not a liability issue. States generally have sovereign immunity over such things, and there is no legal requirement to protect people from wild animal attacks. This is more a matter of public safety, and humans generally come first.
- willcipriano 3y ago"It you attack a human, you die" probably predates modern humans.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kijin 3y agoWe've been enforcing this rule for long enough that most animals avoid attacking humans even if they could easily kill us. The rule has been written into their genes through sheer evolutionary pressure. Except house cats, of course. Somehow we've bred them to attack us with impunity.
- _Adam 3y agoThey've optimized the fitness function "cuteness^2 - propensity to bite". So even when they're tearing up my arm it's still so adorable.
- jareklupinski 3y ago> Local officials call the animal Otter 841 referring to the otter throughout the article as "841" made me imagine they were a science experiment or a retired hit-otter it's a pretty cool series of digits, said out loud
- libraryatnight 3y agoIt is. If their goal by using a number was to not anthropomorphize it, they failed, because Otter 841 is one adorable secret agent turned surfer.
- gweinberg 3y agoIt seems so senseless. Why does she destroy the surfboards instead of selling them? I know plenty of surfers that would buy a slightly used surfboard from a sea otter, no questions asked.
- dfcab 3y agoSeriously!
- apgwoz 3y agoJust what we need, more kooks on Wavestorms in the water! (Explanation for non-surf adjacent folks: kook is a “n00b” and Wavestorm is a brand of foam boards that you used to be able to buy at Costco for $99 or whatever. Forget the fact that they are actually quite capable boards and many really good surfers will paddle out on them, it became a symbol of good surfers having a bad day dodging people who can’t surf. Note: I am most definitely a kook / horrible surfer who doesn’t anymore, but never actually owned a Wavestorm)
- retrocryptid 3y agoThis is absolutely not the strangest thing I've seen in Santa Cruz.
- retrocryptid 3y agoyou would think 841 would prefer an otter island longboard.
- retrocryptid 3y ago"goofy foot otter" is the name of my next band.
- defrost 3y agoIt's not just the otters, seals and dolphins also love surfboards; (possibly geo restricted to AU) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAzI13tT0Gk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAzI13tT0Gk (just the event) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOHULsrvtTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOHULsrvtTE (san diego seal) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2M01_9jVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2M01_9jVk but mostly they just like to mix in with the surfers and do their own thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpYTyE3dO84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpYTyE3dO84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWxcNzNhm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWxcNzNhm4
- rkagerer 3y agoLinks all work in Canada
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- outside1234 3y agoMaybe she just has good taste in surfboards and so destroys every Chinese wavestorm she sees?
- pvaldes 3y agoHaving a surfboard with sea otter bite marks would be sooo coool... I bet that the otter will not touch the black and white ones.
- ROTMetro 3y agoNext we're going to have Sea Otters riding Orcas and stealing our sailboats. Friggen 2023 man.