North American River Otter Essay

The North American River Otter (Lutra canadensis) is an animal that is often seen in zoo captivity. Previous research demonstrates that otters are solitary with age, form kinship like relationships, often undergo positive reinforcement and active training techniques, and become lethargic after feeding. This study sought to demonstrate the effects of number of people and time since feeding on river otter backflip activity. By observing two river otters every minute post feeding for backflips and number of people present, it was determined that there is not a strong correlation between either of the two variables and otter backflips. However, both had a slightly negative correlation. This indicates that other methodology is at play for the activity of river otters, which should be further tested to be harnessed and used in later exhibits. This research can be …show more content…
I evaluated the number of backflips per minute since feeding as well as the number of backflips in comparison to the number of people present by the tank. For hypothesis one, people affecting backflips, it was thought that the presence of people would increase backflip activity (Figure 1). However, this was not supported. The pattern is shown that regardless of training, otters do not increase activity for a crowd. Biologically, this means that the average number of backflips does not depend on the number of people present. The second hypothesis was that time since feeding would decrease backflip activity (Figure 2). This also was not supported. Biologically, this means that the average number of backflips is not dependent on the time since feedings. However, there was a low sample size, 2 otters, and one of the otters was asleep the majority of the time, so results had to be averaged. The averaging resulted in less noise, but with more samples it could have produced stronger data