Endangered
Hairy-nosed otter
Lutra sumatrana
The hairy-nosed otter is a semiaquatic mammal native to Southeast Asia and one of the rarest and least known otter species.
Appearance
The hairy-nosed otter has a short brown fur that becomes paler on the belly. Some individuals are reddish-chestnut in colour.
Head-to-body length ranges from 57.5 to 82.6 cm (22.6 to 32.5 in), tail length from 35 to 50.9 cm (13.8 to 20.0 in), and weight from 5 to 8 kg (11 to 18 lb).
Range and habitat
This hairy-nosed otter occurs in Southeast Asia from southern Thailand, Cambodia, southern Vietnam and Peninsular Malaysia to Sumatra and Borneo. In Thailand, it was recorded in the Pru Toa Daeng peat swamp forest and in areas around the Bang Nara river. It mainly habits lowland flooded forests with climaxing vegetation in three levels: a primary forest zone, a secondary forest zone made up of Melaleuca cajuputi, and a third zone of grasslands.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The hairy-nosed otter occurs in coastal areas and on larger inland rivers, solitary or in groups of up to four. Its diet includes fish, such as broadhead catfish, snakeheads, and climbing perch, and water snakes, mollusks, and crustaceans.
During the dry season, individuals forage in drainage canals and ponds. Pairing of a male and a female may be limited to the breeding period. Populations in Cambodia breed between November and March.
In crisis
It is threatened by loss of natural resources and poaching. The hairy-nosed otter is threatened by the loss of natural resources and poaching. The hairy-nosed otter is the rarest otter in Asia, most likely verging on extinction in the northern parts of its range and of uncertain status elsewhere.
Only a few viable populations remain, widely scattered in region. The species is threatened by loss of lowland wetland habitats, hunting for fur and meat, and accidental killing during fishing.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Hairy-nosed otter is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Hairy-nosed otter, Wikidata item Q751763. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
