How do you spend most of your time at work? If you鈥檙e like most people, the answer is 鈥 and getting so scared about the coming 鈥榮ingularity鈥 (when self-aware computers rise up to destroy us) that you have to watch a video of on a riverbank just to calm down enough to avoid screaming out loud.鈥
Well, I have some good news and some bad news:
The good news is that it won鈥檛 be robots that rise up and destroy us. The bad news is that it will be otters.
鈥淥tters?!鈥 you say. That鈥檚 impossible. They are so cute and fun to watch as they play and slide and swim in the water, rolling on their backs with what seems like the specific intent of letting us watch them use a flat, table-like rock as they crack open an oyster shell and eat with their hands like a human being. You want to tie bibs around their necks and hand them cups of mignonette sauce. You鈥檙e not afraid of them.
Well, you should be. River otters are vicious predators. They can grow to be four feet long and weigh up to 30 pounds鈥攁nd they have to eat 15 percent of their body weight in food every day. And they don’t kill just for food or survival. Male sea otters, close relatives of the deceptively attractive river otter, have been , seemingly just for pleasure. (I can鈥檛 believe I just typed that sentence, but it is true.)
罢丑别测鈥檝别 . Like 13-year-old Kierra Clark and her 11-year-old cousin this past summer in Washington State. 聽Or, in a terrifying incident captured on video, 19-year-old Will Gibbons, also in Florida, that same year.
And now, this week, thanks to a series of photographs taken in (where else?) Florida, we learn that these voracious terror-beasts hunt and kill prey as formidable as alligators! () The eyewitness to the attack said she was sure the otter ate the alligator because she heard 鈥渃runching noises鈥 as the dagger-toothed 鈥渨ater-leopard鈥 .
These furry killing machines are at the very top of the food chain. They hunt in packs. 聽They are growing in number, have , and appear to be getting bigger and more aggressive.
It鈥檚 time we face the music:
The otters are coming for us. They will eat us alive and pick their teeth with the bones of our pinky fingers.
The Anatomy of an Otter Attack
