Mammals · plate 18 of 60
Otter
Lutra lutra
Everything is a game, including the fish.
Only 1.0% of people are Otters. (estimated)
If you're an Otter
You are energetic, curious, and a committed player. Otters slide down banks, juggle stones and turn every riverbank into an obstacle course; you have never met an object you didn't want to pick up. You are warm toward your own and quick to make them laugh. You also eat constantly and are always slightly damp.
Otter fur is among the densest of any mammal, with tens of thousands of hairs per square centimeter, and the animal has no blubber; it stays warm on trapped air alone.
The Otter as a spirit animal
You are the person who makes the group fun, and you are more capable than the fun suggests. You learn by touching things, you hate being bored, and you are loyal to a small family you play with. The flaw is that you need constant stimulation, and you will dismantle a quiet afternoon to see how it works. You can be forgiven anything. You usually are.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with an Otter
Do
- Play; it is how an otter learns, bonds and checks you out.
- Feed them often; a small fast body in cold water burns through fish.
- Give them water, or failing that, a slide.
Don't
- Don't expect stillness; an otter at rest is between games.
- Don't take the roughhousing personally; it is affection with teeth.
When it goes wrong: A frightened otter bolts for the water and vanishes; let it go, it comes back when the fuss is over.
The Otter in a relationship
You love playfully and physically. Otters court by chasing and tumbling in the water, and the mother raises the cubs for about a year, teaching them to swim and fish. You show affection by doing things together, preferably wet ones. A partner who can't take a joke will not last the first swim.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 7
- Boldness
- 6
- Energy
- 9
- Curiosity
- 10
- Devotion
- 8
- Roaming
- 4
- Otter cubs are born unable to swim and are often reluctant to start; the mother drags them into the water to teach them.
- Otters close their ears and nostrils underwater, and most dives last well under a minute.
- Sea otters, the ocean-going cousins, crack shellfish with stones and may keep a favorite one tucked in a pouch of loose skin under the arm.
Otters in literature
- Otter — The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908)
- Little Joe Otter — The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat, Thornton W. Burgess (1914)
- Otr — Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson (1220)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Otter's. If you got Otter, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelDolphinSperm Whale
Among the 60
Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, Brockhaus-Efron (1892). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
