Otters, with their gleeful yikkering, playful presence and sinuous underwater grace, are emblematic of the joy and resilience of nature in many parts of the world. But they aren’t among the first animals that come to mind when we think of Thailand. Yet several species of the sleek aquatic mammal frolic in Thailand’s watery thoroughfares and along its tropical coastline, although precious little is known about them. “Most wildlife studies in Thailand are about big carnivores, like tigers and leopards. There’s a vast amount of data from camera-trap surveys for these species, but we haven’t looked at smaller species [like otters] so much,” Naruemon Tantipisanuh, a conservation researcher at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi in Thailand, told Mongabay. To plug this knowledge gap, Naruemon and her colleagues recently completed a five-year camera-trapping study in southern Thailand’s coastal wetlands to document the distribution of two species of otter along the fast-developing seaboard. Publishing their results in Global Ecology and Conservation, the team report that although both smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata) and Asian small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinereus) are able to survive in mosaics of human-modified land, comprising plantations, farmland, aquaculture ponds and urban areas, they still rely heavily on patches of remaining natural habitat, such as mangrove forest. “Otters try to adapt themselves, but if possible, they would still prefer their natural habitat,” said Naruemon, lead author of the new study. “The problem is that land-use change can occur at any time, so perhaps landowners will want to develop plantations into…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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