Zoo keeps growing: 1st two otters arrive

The first of the river otters have arrived at the New York State Zoo at Thompson Park, awaiting the completion of their brand-new exhibit space.

The pair arrived Saturday evening from a North Carolina wildlife rehabilitation facility, and were lapping up attention from a parade of visiting zoo staff and friends in their off-exhibit holding areas Sunday afternoon.

Zoo Director John Scott Foster pointed out the webbed feet, strong, almost flipper-like tails and specialized fur of the creatures, and described their usual temperaments.

“Their two settings are full-tilt and asleep,” he said. “There’s nothing in between.”

A few other neat tidbits about otters: They can use their muscular tails as a kind of third rear leg to stand up on; special layers of fur insulate their skin when they swim so it never gets wet, and they can pinch their nostrils closed for convenience under water.

The otters will make themselves at home and go on display for visitors in their new exhibit space sometime at the end of June. The exhibit will include an underwater viewing area, pools with prey such as crayfish hiding among the rocks for the animals to hunt, a waterfall and a land area.

“It’s designed to be an excellent, beautiful exhibit for visitors, provide the otters an interesting life and make it easy for the keepers to take care of the animals,” Mr. Foster said.

Two more otters will arrive later this month, one from a New Jersey zoo and the other, Louie, from the Wild Center at Tupper Lake where he has been on loan for about four years. He previously was kept in an off-exhibit area at the Thompson Park zoo and brought out on a harness for special events.

If all of the otters get along, they will spend time in the display space together. Otherwise, they may be rotated in and out in shifts. The zoo hopes a pair might breed.

“Louie is fixed, so the only chance is him,” Mr. Foster said, as one of the new arrivals, a curious 4-year-old male, hammed it up for a photographer.

“It’s an arranged marriage — a younger woman, an older man,” he said jokingly. “It goes on in zoos all the time.”

That otter and his possible love match, a 4-month-old female being kept separately for now, are awaiting names, as part of a contest among area schools raising money for the exhibit.

Sherman Elementary School and H.T. Wiley Intermediate School, Watertown, already have earned naming rights for two of the four animals that will inhabit the new space.

That leaves otter naming rights up for grabs for one more school through fundraising efforts.

In a separate fundraising effort sponsored by the Times, called the Otter 400 Club, the goal is to acquire donations of $50 or more from at least 400 people.

“We’re 50 people away from reaching our goal,” Mr. Foster said.

In other zoo news, the wolf pups have just started spending more time out in the main exhibit area, where their mom, Kaja, dug a den beneath a log. Several pups could be seen Sunday play-fighting with each other just outside the den.

Starting this week, zoo staff will begin placing one or more pups in a small pen inside the exhibit near the fence line where visitors can see them up close.