NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 
When captured young and kindly treated, the 
Cape Otter soon becomes quite tame, and will 
follow its master about, trotting at his heels after 
the manner of a dog. We captured a young otter 
once in Natal, and kept it alive in a pond in a wire- 
netting enclosure. It was perfectly tame, and made 
great friends with the dogs, and loved to romp and 
play with them. It was exceedingly playful—in 
fact as much so as a kitten. 
It preferred flesh food to any other kind of diet. 
Crabs were chewed up and swallowed entire. 
In the wild condition the Cape Otter is carniv- 
orous. Its diet is varied, consisting of fish, which 
it hunts in the water, usually in pairs or family 
parties consisting of the parents and cubs. Possess- 
ing no webs to its toes, it is, in consequence, 
not so swift and agile in the water as its web-footed 
relatives; therefore the fish which usually fall 
victims to it are the slow-swimming eels and cat- 
fish. The rivers and spruits in many parts of 
South Africa dry up during times of drought, and 
only isolated pools remain. In these the fish are 
pent up, and fall a comparatively easy prey to the 
otter. 
Fish, however, as a general rule are difficult to 
catch, and moreover are not too plentiful in South 
African rivers, so a fish diet is largely supplemented 
or quite superseded by fresh-water crabs, river mus- 
sels, water tortoises, monitor lizards, frogs, and 
other kinds of aquatic creatures. Water birds often 
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