Where are all of these pets coming from? Otters are difficult to breed in captivity without proper techniques. Many conservationists believe that the majority of animals sold as pets are captured in the wild.[<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Thailand, a number of Japanese citizens have been arrested after they were caught trying to smuggle otters through airport security. In Vietnam, Save Vietnam\u2019s Wildlife, a nonprofit organization that rehabilitates animals confiscated from traffickers, has begun receiving otters for the first time in the group\u2019s 14-year history. The police delivered 10 otters to the group in November alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Threatened smooth-coated otters and endangered hairy-nosed otters, both found in Southeast Asia, are sometimes caught up in the pet trade. But Asian small-clawed otters, a \u201cterminally cute\u201d threatened species, tend to be the primary targets for poachers, Dr. Duplaix said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYoung otters are often taken from the wild while their mother is killed trying to defend her litter,\u201d said one expert.CreditNoriko Hayashi for The New York Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n All three species were in trouble long before the pet trade began. Pollution and development have destroyed their habitats, and fishermen and aquaculture farmers kill the animals to remove competition. Poachers also target otters for their skins, which are usually sent to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one knows exactly where or when the otter pet craze began, but a number of experts believe it originated in Indonesia about five years ago, according to Vincent Nijman, an anthropologist at Oxford Brookes University in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asian small-clawed otters are not domestically protected in Indonesia, but all trade in unprotected wildlife is subject to a harvest quota, and there is no quota for otters. This makes their commercial trade illegal without a special permit, Dr. Nijman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe now see hundreds on offer on Facebook and Instagram, and none have permits,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Otter owners in Indonesia often join \u201ccivet lover<\/a>\u201d groups, online communities for fans of small carnivores. Members get together to show off their animals, Dr. Nijman said, parading them down the street on leashes on Sundays in Jakarta, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn national news<\/a> and online in Indonesia, this has been presented as something acceptable, fun, novel and exciting,\u201d Dr. Nijman said. \u201cIt\u2019s for people who want something different than your normal cat or dog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Thailand, trapping, selling or exporting otters is illegal, but the animals are freely traded online there, too. Penthai Siriwat, a doctoral candidate at Oxford Brookes University, monitored seven Thai-language Facebook pages from 2017 to early 2019, and found 572 individual animals for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s just been increasing,\u201d she said. Over half the otters for sale in Thailand are litters of newborns that have not yet opened their eyes, Ms. Siriwat reported<\/a> in the Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest are mostly juveniles weaned on cat food, which sellers claim are guaranteed to live and thus are more expensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TOKYO \u2014 We smelled them before we saw them. Amid an overwhelming reek of urine and scat, we descended a tight staircase into a cramped basement, where tattered ottomans faced a small wire cage. Within the cage stood the star attractions and source of the odor: four Asian small-clawed otters. Spotting us, the animals burst into chirps, whimpers, shrieks and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-3545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-www-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3546,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/04\/15\/science\/15SCI-OTTERS-13\/merlin_151625034_5e1063ba-1ccf-4a5d-9297-87de7c0cc06d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n