phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps) (12/15/90)
[This thread has been otter-napped from "rec.scuba", for comment from "sci.bio".] In article <1575@cluster.cs.su.oz.au>, andrewt@cluster.cs.su.oz (Andrew Taylor) wrote: > >In article <9@garth.UUCP> phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps) writes: >> _Enhydra lutris_ is the only living species of SEA otter. > >No, there is also Lutra felina, the Marine Otter or Chingungo ^^^^^^ >found in coastal peru and chile and their offshore islands. No--again. The crucial points determining whether an otter is a SEA otter or not are anatomical, most noticeably the glorification of the hind feet into flippers (not merely toes with webbing between them) that look as if they were placed on the wrong feet (i.e.: the outermost toe is longest). An otter is not a SEA otter simply by virtue of hanging out in the SEA and eating SEAfood (I made this point previously using Washington State river otters as an example; I don't know how to make it any clearer to you). Give your river otters a few million years, and maybe they'll qualify as SEA otters. >> I'd be very interested to learn where you saw ANYTHING about it. > >The first [...] was a ~1000 year old depiction on a wall in northern Peru. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Intriguing. Were it a sea otter, I'd want a transparency of the depiction of it for my sea otter slide show. >[...] I looked for the otter near [northern Peru] but was told that >[they were] no longer found in that area. I later met someone >who had seen one in southern peru. > >> Remains of sea otters have been found no further south than Baja California, >> Mexico. The conventional wisdom is that sea otters would die of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> overheating long before they could cross the Equator. >I'd be careful with that sort of reasoning. I was; I identified it as "conventional wisdom". >It'd probably tell you penguins can't cross the equator which is untrue. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It wouldn't surprise me to learn that penguins could NOT cross the Equator, but I have not studied penguins at any level, so I would be unlikely to make any statements at all about penguins, unless I identified them as speculation. I've read quite a bit on sea otters, and also know which scientists doing original sea otter research to call to find out more. >> Providing its scientific name would make your claim easier to resolve. >[It's] Lutra felina, the Marine Otter or Chingungo [...] ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ _Lutra_ is a genus composed exclusively of species of RIVER otters, regardless of what the common name suggests. Sea otters were in _Lutra_ many years (a century or two or three) ago, but have since been placed variously (and, I believe, contemporaneously) in _Enhydra_ and _Latax_, with _Latax_ losing out to _Enhydra_ for sea otters sometime during the last half-century. I can dig up more on the systematics of SEA otters if you would like (but it's probably best handled thru e-mail). >A little less parochiality would help more. >I know to expect this from people in the US but this is too much. Less pedantry and more knowledge would help you more, You just don't have your facts straight. >You don't believe there is a marine otter in Peru ^^^^^^ ^^^^ >because its not mentioned in "Marine Mammals of North America"! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I realized the apparent parochiality suggested by the title at a time that seemed too late to cancel the posting (i.e.: some sites would have received it), and decided to wait and take my lumps for it. The title certainly is reasonable to question, but that rhetorical point is no substitute for knowledge about sea otters. I recognize that the article in question might be challenging for readers in the Southwest Pacific to obtain, but its readers should notice that it identifies sea otter populations off Asia, also NOT a part of North America. You do agree that Peru is in the *Eastern Pacific Ocean*, part of the title of Kenyon's _The Sea Otter In The Eastern Pacific Ocean_, which I also mentioned, don't you ? If you don't want to take Kenyon's word for it, will Russian sea otter biologists suffice as unAmerican enough ? Of course, they will claim that they invented sea otters first :-), and may make much of the "sea otter gap" between their homeland and the US, but we Amerikanskis don't let that bother us. I'm not making this up, but Russki sea otters (the suggested _gracilis_ subspecies) are distinguishable from other sea otters by the REDdish underfur of the Russki sea otters. >As I said, you have to be careful using the word only ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ >in connection with nature. I was careful, and the word "only" is warranted in this instance. >Divers who have seen the great diversity of marine life >should be particularly aware of this. You have offered these pedantic admonitions once already. Repeating them without getting your facts straight makes you appear more than a little silly. -- [The foregoing may or may not represent the position, if any, of my employer, ] [ who is identified solely to allow the reader to account for personal biases.] [This article was written & posted during the daily period called lunch-time.] Clay Phipps Intergraph APD: 2400#4 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303; 415/852-2327 UseNet (Intergraph internal): ingr!apd!phipps UseNet (external): {apple,pyramid,sri-unix}!garth!phipps EcoNet: cphipps [Patience--our delay for receipt of net-news is now approximately 7 days !!!!]
andrewt@cs.su.oz (Andrew Taylor) (12/16/90)
In article <15@garth.UUCP> phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps) writes: >>> _Enhydra lutris_ is the only living species of SEA otter. >> [I say] No, there is also Lutra felina, the Marine Otter or Chingungo > No--again. The crucial points determining whether an otter is a SEA otter > or not are anatomical, most noticeably the glorification of the hind feet > into flippers (not merely toes with webbing between them) that look as if > they were placed on the wrong feet (i.e.: the outermost toe is longest). > An otter is not a SEA otter simply by virtue of hanging out in the SEA > and eating SEAfood. You'll have to forgive me, being Australian my grasp of english isn't so good. I thought by sea otter you meant an otter that lived in (not just visited) the sea. I was I see now you meant an otter with outermost toe longest. Maybe in future you could confusion among the less knowledgable by claiming instead that "Enhydra lutris is the only living species of otter with outermost toe longest". Just the thing to start a conversation at a party. > Give your river otters a few million years, and maybe they'll qualify as > SEA otters. I'm sure they are hoping their outmost toe will grow and they can be real sea otters. Then maybe the penguins and sea lions will stop ridiculing them - call yourself a sea otter with toes like that! Andrew