California ❤️ Sea Otters 🦦 I just signed legislation restoring the California Sea Otter Voluntary Contribution Fund. Californians can support sea otter conservation and research through voluntary donations on state income tax returns.

Rabid goats, otters, beavers, & bats are making news. Here's how to protect yourself While the CDC reported increased human exposure to possibly rabid animals, it's too soon to tell if the number of animals w/ rabies is rising. 📷: Dasha Gaian/Flickr cc

Love is in the Ocean for survival and safety from drift ! Sea Otters hold hands in the water while sleeping to keep from drifting away in ocean currents and tides. This behaviour helps them stay with their group, conserve energy, and remain safe while resting in open coastal waters. Why Paws Link Together? Preventing Drift: Ocean winds and waves can easily carry a solitary sleeping Otter far out to sea. Holding paws stops them from floating away. Rafting Together: Otters form large floating groups called rafts-sometimes numbering up to hundreds of Otters ~ linked together for collective security. Kelp Anchors: Along with holding hands, Otters frequently wrap themselves in long strands of seaweed or kelp. This acts as a natural anchor to keep the entire group tethered in a safe spot. Mothers and Pups: Mother Otters will hold onto their young or keep pups on their chests to ensure the babies do not drift away before they learn to swim well. #WildlifePhotography# #Otters# #SeaOtters# 🦦 🎦 Credit: Wild Ocean Lite.

More good news for Ethereum security 🔥 @osec_io has joined the final push, contributing $7K across 40 projects through their ETHSecurity badgeholder. With badgeholder donations carrying boosted influence in matching, this contribution goes even further. Huge thank you to OtterSec! 💜

In 1991, researchers from Monterey Bay Aquarium were watching a wild sea otter mother who had lost her pup and was still swimming around the area calling for him, which was already heartbreaking enough, but at almost exactly the same time the aquarium happened to have an orphaned male pup named Elwood who was also spending a significant portion of his day calling for a mother he didn’t have. So at some point the researchers found themselves in the extremely specific situation of having one sea otter desperately looking for a baby and one baby desperately looking for a sea otter mom, and apparently someone said the scientific equivalent of “okay, this might be stupid, but hear me out.” They brought Elwood out to the bay, found the female still there, put him into the water and waited to see what would happen. She swam over, inspected this random baby the humans had just delivered to her… and adopted him... The next morning they were still together, and researchers continued seeing them together for months. And because apparently “what if we give the sad baby to the sad mom?” can occasionally be a legitimate contribution to conservation science, this accidental little family helped inspire Monterey Bay Aquarium’s later surrogate-mother program for orphaned sea otters. I love wildlife rehabilitation because sometimes it involves years of research, specialized veterinary medicine and extremely complicated protocols, and sometimes somebody just looks at two animals and goes, “I have an idea.”