Share this Story: 'He was humping it. It was so bizarre': Exposing the 'aberrant' nature of a sea otter's sex life
'He was humping it. It was so bizarre': Exposing the 'aberrant' nature of a sea otter's sex life
Ed and Pat Kidder saw one of the area dogs, Tuk, floating in the water — drowned. Whiskers the otter was there, too, copulating with the carcass
Postmedia News
Apr 10, 2014 • January 25, 2015 • 3 minute read
Whiskers wasn't your average sea otter.
Rather than hang out with his own kind off Nootka Island on the west coast of Vancouver Island, he would often come ashore to socialize with humans.
'He was humping it. It was so bizarre': Exposing the 'aberrant' nature of a sea otter's sex life Back to video
He'd crawl onto the lap or around the neck of the assistant lightkeeper's 14-year-old son, Gabe, and would even go after balls tossed into the ocean.
But Whiskers' behaviour also troubled Ed and Pat Kidder, who served 44 years on "the lights" before retiring in 2003.
One day the area dogs were down by the rocks barking and Whiskers pushed a log towards them, daring them to jump onto it and come closer. Pat recalls thinking: " 'Don't go out on there or he'll have you and you'll wind up dead.' Whiskers was a smart animal."
Diana Nethercott/ Postmedia News files
None of the dogs fell for it then, but a couple of days later, the Kidders saw one of the dogs, Tuk, floating in the water — drowned. Whiskers was there, too, copulating with the carcass while parading past the other two wildly barking dogs.
"He'd go back and forth, holding Tuk's head up out of the water," Pat relates. "He was humping it. It was so bizarre. We had never anticipated anything like that."
Who would? After all, cute and cuddly — not rapist and murderer — are mentioned in the typical bio on sea otters.
The Vancouver Aquarium, for one, has effectively used the charismatic species as a powerful marketing tool over the years.
Remember the 2007 YouTube video of two otters "holding hands" in their tank? Almost 20 million viewers at last count.
The aquarium also goes to great lengths to save sea otters, including the rescue last October of Wally, blinded by shotgun pellets near Tofino. It took numerous surgeries, including for a fractured flipper and broken teeth, but Wally survived. Total cost: $30,000 in staff time, medicine, supplies and food.
Laura Rauch / The Associated Press files
"That's one thing we have with our visitors: 'Oh, they look adorable, like stuffed animals,' " explains Brian Sheehan, the aquarium's marine mammal curator. "But they definitely have the potential for being strong and aggressive."
The incident with Whiskers happened almost 30 years ago, and is by no means an isolated incident of interspecies, or misdirected, sex involving male sea otters.
Brian Gisborne operates a commercial water-taxi service in summer for hikers on the West Coast Trail and also works for the Canadian government on contract, keeping an eye out for marine mammals on the west coast.
In 2005 he was off Long Beach when he came across Rocky, a sea otter. On this day, it was a cormorant seabird that caught Rocky's attention.
"He tried to copulate with it," says Mr. Gisborne, noting the bird was drowned. "He held it and you could see what was going on.
"I knew what sea otters are like. It didn't surprise me. I don't think that it was isolated."
Farther south, off California, researchers documented 19 cases of sexual behaviour between male sea otters and juvenile harbour seals in Monterey Bay from 2000 to 2002.
At least three different male otters were observed "harassing, dragging, guarding and copulating" with harbour seals up to seven days after death by drowning. The carcasses of 15 seals were recovered, showing evidence of severe trauma, including both vaginal and rectal.
Curiously, two sea otter biologists from Alaska contacted by The Vancouver Sun reported no such incidents.
Researchers elsewhere have documented "mobbing" events when groups of male monk seals in Hawaii attempt to mate with a single adult female or an immature seal of either sex. At Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean an Antarctic fur seal was reported trying to mate with a king penguin. When it didn't work out, the seal ate the penguin.
The California study suggested an imbalance between males and females may cause some to divert their aggressions. In otter populations, where males establish a dominance hierarchy based on age, sex and fitness, subdominant males may have limited access to receptive females of the same species, which could cause them to look elsewhere.
Yes, even to dogs.
As Ed Kidder succinctly puts it: "Whiskers was the sea otter from hell."