Otters in the wild spend 40-60% of their day foraging for food. They are carnivores and may eat fish, crustaceans, shellfish, small mammals, birds, eggs, frogs, and turtles.
Join the Houston Zoo as we unite with zoos across the country to celebrate Otterly Mad Week, Sunday, May 30 through Saturday, June 5.
They’re cute, they’re playful, and they’re found all over the world, including right here in Texas.
So what are they?
They’re otters!
Join the Houston Zoo as we unite with zoos across the country to celebrate Otterly Mad Week, Sunday, May 30 through Saturday, June 5.
Started last year by the International Otter Survival Fund, Otterly Mad Week aims to educate people around the world about otters and their importance in the environment. There are 13 different species of otters in the world, and two of them – the North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis) and the Asian Small-Clawed Otter (Aonyx cinereus) – can be found at the Houston Zoo!
Wednesday our North American River Otter
During Otterly Mad Week, the Houston Zoo is showcasing both of our adorable otter species by offering our guests special opportunities to meet the otter keepers and ask questions and to hear otter-themed stories. If you’ve ever wondered how fast an otter can swim or what types of toys an otter likes, come watch an otter training or enrichment session and find out! On Sunday, May 30 and Saturday, June 5, stop by the otter conservation table and put your creativity to work in decorating an otter-themed craft. By donating to otter conservation, you can also enter to win an original painting done by one of our otters or a behind-the-scenes tour to see where our otters call home. For anyone who loves otters, Otterly Mad Week is the perfect time to visit the Houston Zoo!
Check out www.otter.org for more otter information!
Spotlight on Texas
Ever wonder what animals you can find right here in Texas? Well, look no further! Most of the animals in the John P. McGovern Children’s Zoo can be found right here in the great state of Texas. Some are here naturally and some you can find on farms across the state. Texas has a great diversity of habitat with lots of animals!
As you first walk into the Children’s Zoo, imagine yourself in the city. You will see a stream of Koi fish that are very colorful additions to many ponds and water gardens. This is also where you can swap your nature items in our Swap Shop. Of course where you find a great city, you will find a great forest. Winding through the boardwalk you will see Deer, Turkey, Owls, Porcupines, Coati, Bald Eagle, and Otters! As the Otters are enticing you to stop and play you will notice the nice coastal smell wafting your way. The sounds of the
Coati
shore pull you along the stream to the coast to watch our Pelicans and sea gulls get their afternoon lunch. Fish are flying through the air and our Pelican, Walter, is trying to woo the female, Mable, by giving her special treats. Next door, the fresh water Alligator Snapping turtles take you back to prehistoric times when reptiles ruled the earth. You will watch and wonder, “Just how long can they stay under water?” If you sit and wait, you might want to bring a book because they can hold their breath up to 50 minutes! As you wait, you see something pop up out of the corner of your eye. When you go to look, nothing is there! Everyone knows that patience is a virtue, so you sit for just a couple minutes and a prairie dog pops his head out to look for predators. These rodents spend a lot of time burrowing in the ground. Ever want to just burrow underground yourself? Well, you can get a fresh perspective by popping your own head in one of the viewing windows. By this time, it is pretty sunny and you see a nice cool cave. Through our cave system, you will see some of the reptiles and amphibians that make Texas their home. As you turn a corner to the second cave, you see a nice starry sky. As you walk through you notice some fluttering behind glass. At first you think it’s birds, but it is bats! These fruit and nectar-feeding bats are our neighbors from Central America but are representing the insect eating bats you can find flying our night sky
prairie dog
right in our backyard. There is a colony of around 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats in Bracken Cave, near San Antonia, that eat 250 tons of insects every night! Talk about pest control! As you wander out of the bat cave, you see a Swift fox. Don’t let it’s size
white tailed deer and Rio Grande turkey
fool you into thinking it’s a baby. These are actually fully grown adults. Next, you see the farm animals. These are all domesticated animals that many people raise. These are animals that you can touch! You may not be able to choose between the silly antics of the goats or reaching over to give our Zebu cattle a nice back rub. Either way, they have a way of warming your heart. By this time, you may be tired but the kids are still wild. Go ahead and relax on a bench while watching your kids have a grand time on the play ground or in the water play area.
WOW! Texas is big but you can see it all in just a short time right here in your home town. So next time you talk a walk through the Children’s Zoo imagine yourself taking your own personal road trip through Texas.
Now for the fun part – every day the cheetahs get some sort of enrichment and today its bones! Bones are not only entertaining for the cheetahs but are also good for their teeth since their regular diet is ground meat.
The bones are kept in a freezer at the lion building so Kevin and I have to head across the zoo to get them.
Since the cheetahs are already outside, we just toss the bones over the fence to them. This will keep them busy for a while.
yummy!
In the last post we told you all about what the cheetahs get for breakfast, so now its time to deliver.
You’ll see that the cheetahs are excited to get their breakfast each morning and we use this as part of their training to get them to come inside. The great outdoors is way more interesting but sometimes we need to lock them in the barn to get work done or if there is bad weather. If they always get a big bowl of food inside, then INSIDE=GOOD TIMES and they are eager to come for us each day.
And now its Kiburi’s turn
Next time: Cleaning the yard. Hopefully the Smell-O-Vision will be up and running by then.
*This is part 3/4 in our CheetahDog Blog Giveaway. Post a comment and you’ll be entered to win two free tickets to the Zoo! If you answer all 4 in this series, your chances of winning increase.
After we check on everyone in the morning, the first task of the day is breakfast. As you can see, the kitchen at the cheetah barn is quite cozy. That’s Carnivore Supervisor Kevin making breakfast today.
time to make the donuts...
It does have everything a cheetah keeper would need though – brushes, leashes, dog food, tools, cleaning supplies, and safety equipment.
Mmmmm yummy!
*This is part 2/4 in our CheetahDog Blog Giveaway. Post a comment and you’ll be entered to win two free tickets to the Zoo! If you answer all 4 in this series, your chances of winning increase.
The principles of animal training are the same for all species, from your dog at home to a cheetah at the zoo. Our favorite training method is positive reinforcement – simply put, when the animal does what the trainer asks, they get something they like (which in the case of cheetahs is a big pile of meat). The animal then makes a positive association with that behavior and wants to do it again.
As I mentioned earlier, we want to show off the cheetah’s speed. Contrary to popular opinion, cheetahs don’t spend their day racing around at 65 mph. Running is a lot of work, especially when your food just sits on a plate waiting for you.
The cheetahs were already trained to come to the trainer when called so we started by calling them out to the front of the exhibit. The faster they run, the bigger the treat. Check out the Cheetah Cam:
Fast running = Big Pile o’ Meat. See, this isn’t that hard.
