THE SEA OTTER—KENYON 405 
Sven Waxell, second in command of Vitus Bering’s shipwrecked 
srew, recorded that when they first reached shore on Bering Island 
the sea otters were quite tame but became wild after being hunted. 
It is not surprising, then, that the unmolested otters at Amchitka 
are not particularly wild, but we were surprised at the degree to which 
a wild otter could be tamed. In November of 1957 we began tossing 
fish heads to a young adult male that habitually loitered near our 
fish-cleaning platform. Within a few days he would come close to 
the beach at our call and within a week would come to the water’s 
edge to take fish heads from our hands. In another week he became 
a pest, walking boldly up to us and demanding food. Without the 
need of a net we caught him and placed a metal tag in the web of his 
hind flipper. Not in the least upset by this indignity he demanded his 
fish before returning to the water. Wild sea otters never eat on land, 
and so our “wild” pet often returned with difficulty over cobbles and 
boulders to the sea while attempting to walk on three legs, clasping 
fish heads to his chest with the fourth. 
THE SEA OTTER IN CAPTIVITY 
The sea otter is a most appealing animal in captivity as well as in 
the wild. Although individual characteristics of the animals differ, 
we find that many of them are very tractable and will quietly take 
food from our hands within a few minutes of capture. On the other 
hand, a yearling female that we caught in September 1955 was so 
shy that nearly a week passed before she could be induced to take 
food that we held out to her. When first captured, she leaned 
against the back of her cage in a half-sitting position watching our 
movements wide-eyed, as if in astonishment. When we brought her 
sea urchins and fish she placed her forepaws on her cheeks and 
hissed in a very catlike way, or pushed the proffered food away with 
her paws. After she became accustomed to us she readily took food 
from our hands, never offering to bite with her strong canine teeth. 
This animal is now in excellent health at the Woodland Park Zoo 
in Seattle. By the spring of 1957 she had nearly reached adult size 
and appears well adapted to life in captivity. In December of 1957 
we captured a young male on Amchitka which shared her Seattle 
quarters until he died in September of 1958. Acute hemorrhagic 
enteritis appeared to be the immediate cause of death. 
Sea otters require a large amount of food, which poses a difficult 
problem when captives are kept at Amchitka. In order to supply 
the minimum of 6 to 8 pounds of fresh fish required daily by each 
adult otter, a dory must be launched, nets set and pulled daily. In the 
stormy, chilly winds that sweep the Bering Sea such a project is a 
major undertaking when it must be conducted on a sustained basis. 
Our captive female in Seattle weighs 39 pounds and eats approxi- 
