THE BOOK OF THE OTTER 



to the mouth of a drain, the latter serving him as 

 a safe retreat when danger threatens. In fact, 

 during the warm weather, otters are found lying 

 rough in all sorts of unexpected places, often to 

 the great surprise of those who fondly imagine 

 that the animals never leave the vicinity of water. 

 Certain tree-roots and also rock holts have their 

 entrances under water. In some of them there 

 cannot be any great amount of ventilation. An 

 otter cannot live without air, yet presumably it can 

 exist with less than most creatures. Otter cubs are 

 sometimes laid down in holts of the above nature, 

 where there is no ventilation shaft, and we have 

 heard the theory expressed that under such 

 conditions practically all the fresh air that the cubs 

 get is carried in to them in their mother's coat. 

 In our experience, however, even though a holt 

 has an underwater entrance, there are usually 

 plenty of air passages coming down from above, 

 at any rate, sufficient to supply a more than 

 adequate amount of fresh air for breathing 



purposes. The advantage of an underwater 



50 



