Dr. Chris J. Law

And it looks like a river otter, but it actually lives in a marine environment too.

And it actually eats a lot of hard shell prey too.

But we have barely any idea of like what exactly it's doing, what its population sizes is.

It might not be doing well just because there's not a lot of work done on them and just in these remote locations.

There's just such interesting animals.

The fact that they have this integration between their tool-using behavior, their morphology is just unique compared to other things.

It's just interesting that they are able to gain access to these harder prey.

One thing I didn't touch on is that in Monterey Bay, these otters actually exhibit dietary specialization.

Some otters will only eat urchins, others will only eat clams, others will only eat crabs and so on.

So part of my research now is actually trying to investigate why that is or how they're actually able to eat these different types of prey.

So how is it relating to the tool using behavior and how is it relating back to their variation in their biting ability?

So as in, are some otters just able to generate larger bite forces than other otters?

So that's the type of questions that we're hoping to be able to answer soon.

Yeah, so right now that's, I think, primarily found just in California, and it goes back to that carrying capacity.

So because that population is limited in terms of resources and food,

Instead of each individual being a journalist, basically eat everything they can get, they just become super specialized and just become really good at eating a particular prey.

So one individual will just become a really good urchin specialist.

And with an urchin specialist, there's a certain way you have to extract them, a certain way you have to open them and eat them, versus an abalone specialist, which uses completely different behaviors in order to get the abalone prey.

and and eat it.

So they just become these really highly specialized individuals that really are able to get access to these different prey items and do it so well that and efficiently.