Mother Raising Two Pups in July

A mother caring for two pups faces the same dilemma as a mother caring for one: how to keep her pups occupied while she catches fish to feed them and herself. Her advantage over the mother with one pup is that her two pups can entertain each other. But how easy is it to manage that?

On July 11, 2002, I got some relatively good video of an otter mother and her two pups. First I saw the pups playing in the East Trail Pond, that is, they were chasing each other without any apparent purpose. One pup was not trying to escape from the other, nor intimidate the other. Of course they were honing skills that will come in handy when they try to catch fish. However, they did very little diving into the water so that they were completely submerged, a skill necessary for catching fish! Then their mother swam over to the end of a log and both pups raced to her. Let me show you the video clip before I return to my narrative:

As the mother swam off, one of the pups tried to follow her. Then the other pup followed until it got to the next log. There was a good bit of separation as one pup continued over to yet another log where it seemed to look for its mother and then sniffed the log and water around it. As I mentioned on the previous page, otter mothers leave fish part on logs. This video clip gives the impression that by leaving fish parts on a range of logs the mother keeps the pups in a somewhat confined area so she can swim well outside it to forage. Then the far ranging pup swam back to the log the other pup was on and rocked it so the pup fell into the water. Well, I think that is pure play. I can't see how that bit of fun, unlike many of their other antics, prepared the pups for survival.

In the next video clip, which continues the day's story, the pups combined log sniffing with wrestling, and I break my focus on the pups to take a quick glance at where the mother was foraging -- no logs out there, no inducement for the pups to get in her way. Let's look at the video clip:

The pups did some grooming, not mutual, and one seemed to scratch itself on a clump of grass next to the log. The other looked a bit bored with an eye out for its mother. Then when the mother appeared, head up in the water right in front of the pups, the pups didn't rush to her. That I think suggests that they have been conditioned to expect to be fed at the log and not to rush to their mother before she reaches the feeding log. Then the pups seemed to follow their food into the pond. I assume the mother served up some crippled shiners capable of wigging away, or perhaps some insect larva. She wants to accustom the pups to going after their own food. That said, the pups didn't seem that excited by what they managed to eat, if anything.

In the next clip, the pups were again wrestling on the log, but this time doing less slithering in the water. Instead they were jaw to jaw, and then one fell into the water, rolled on its back and seemed to parry the jaw thrusts of the other pup with its paws. Otters roll on their back and eat fish held in their upthrust paws, though in these shallow beaver ponds, I rarely see otters eating like that. This thrust and parry game can't help but hone the pups' skills. Try to eat a live fish by holding it in your hands. You'll wish you had some more jaw and paw skills. Let's look at the video clip:

Then the mother popped up next to the log and this time seemed to smear the length of the log with whatever might be in her mouth. She also left a big enough fish, I assume, since the pups sat up and did some serious chewing. One pup seemed to have a little trouble with its meal. The pups seemed to resume their wrestling, then the mother popped up again, lining the log with fish parts, I think. One pup got another bite; the other pup tried to follow mom. Then after a bit of head rubbing with the other pup, one pup seemed interested in investigating what might have been left along the log. Then the mother appeared, maybe not with food, because this time she evidently told the pups to follow. She may do this vocally or perhaps with body language. This time she didn't immediately dive into the water, but swam off slowly. But she may be leaving things to eat in her wake. The pups did have trouble getting over a log, but, as we'll see in the next clip they can swim well enough so their bobbing in the water behind their mother suggests to me that she might be leaving bits of food.

As the otter family swam away from me they briefly centered their activity around an collection of old tree stumps. Perhaps the mother was using this in the same way that she did the logs in the pond. But over the years I've learned that these big old stumps might mean more to otters. They may have served as dens. At least that's what I concluded when I surprised some otters in this pond in the fall, and they all tried to pile into a stump.

It looked like they were now all too big to fit in, but back in July? On that July 11 morning the otters did not stay at the stump for long. They continued swimming and now the mother seemed to want the pups to try to keep up with her. Here I think we can see the pups do a little diving. And the mother centers her attention on one pup trying, I think, to teach it to dive by flipping it over and forcing it down into the water. Let's look at the clip:

It's a pity I wasn't closer to this action. The other pup hurried over and then I think the three of them began to play, though I think the mother is always mindful of getting the pups to dive down into the water and do less swirling around. Then it looks like the mother swam off and the pups started swirling around, just like we saw them at the beginning of this page.

I've already shared a video of an adult otter flipping a pup on July 19,2000. Here is a poor still from that video

Here is the video clip again. In this case the mother had three pups, quite a handful and she recruited another female to help her. In this segment I don't see the mother or her helper using the log technique to control the young. Perhaps that doesn't work with three otters. I'll return to this family later. Unfortunately this is the only time I saw them that summer.

I did see the two pups again in July 2002. On July 14 there was a north wind that allowed me to get up on the ridge south of the East Trail Pond without scaring otters. And this time I approached a little more to the east where the pond is a bit deeper and the otters have a den in the jumble of granite rocks I was soon lying on because as I came up on the ridge, I saw that there was an otter in the pond. I assumed it was the mother fishing alone, but soon enough I saw something that challenged my characterizations of the capabilities of this mother's two pups. One of them was swimming and diving in front of its mother -- or so it appears to me at the 0:36 second mark. Here's the video clip:

I watched these otters for a good half hour, but much of the time was not sure where they were. They eventually, at the 1:39 mark, began behaving as they did on July 11. The pups played with each other around a clump of grass in the pond, and the mother swam up to the clump to deliver the small fish she caught. At about the 1:50 mark, I missed seeing the mother's delivery. I think because she approached the clump of grass under water. I think we see her making another sneaky delivery at the 2:20 mark. Then at 2:30 she approaches head up and the pups rush her. So much for the manners they seemed to exhibit on July 11. Then at 3:00 I seemed to have lost track of them. I had kept my camera trained to the clump of grass, even though when the otters went behind it, I couldn't see them. The pups evidently swam off, because I soon saw two otters swimming back to the clump. They seemed to come bearing food, but I can't say that they caught it themselves. They ate, seemed to fight over food and then wrestled in the water so that both were on their backs under water. At the 5:40 mark the mother reappeared and seemed to both deliver food to the grass clump and tell her pups to follow, which one did only after seeing what might have been left in the grass. I think they swam into the rock dens below me. I wouldn't see these otters fishing again until mid-August in neighboring beaver ponds.

However, a year earlier, in 2001, a week later in July, on the 19th, I saw a mother and two pups in the same pond taking naps which provides another interesting perspective on how mothers handle their pups in the summer. Next page for that: Page Eight

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By Bob Arnebeck mailto: arnebeck@localnet.com