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100 free Otter trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
10 free Otter trivia questions with answers. Otter trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Otters trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Otters belong to which animal family, also known for weasels and badgers?
Mustelidae
Mustelidae is the weasel family; otters form its Lutrinae subfamily beside badgers, martens and minks.
Q 02Approximately how many extant species of otter are recognized worldwide?
13
They range in adult size from 0.6 to 1.8 metres and from 1 to 45 kilograms, and can live up to 16 years.
Q 03For generations, fishermen in southern Bangladesh have bred which otter species to chase fish into their nets?
Smooth-coated
Smooth-coated otters do the herding; the practice, once widespread across Asia and passed from father to son, survives in the district of Narail.
Q 04What is the staple of most otters' diets?
Fish
Fish is the staple of most otters' diets, supplemented by frogs, crayfish and crabs; otters locate prey underwater with their sensitive whiskers.
Q 05What is a common term for an otter's den or burrow?
Holt
A holt is the otter's den; a badger has a sett, a squirrel a drey and a beaver a lodge.
Q 06With no blubber to keep it warm, which marine mammal has the thickest fur of all, around 160,000 hairs per square centimetre?
Sea otter
The sea otter has no blubber and relies on the densest fur of any mammal, up to about a million hairs per square inch; the underfur traps a layer of insulating air against the skin.
Q 07Sea otters are among the few mammals that use tools; what do they use to dislodge prey and crack shells open?
Rocks
Rocks, banged against shells, put sea otters in a very small club of tool-using mammals.
Q 08What are the single-sex resting groups of ten to a hundred sea otters called?
Rafts
These resting groups are called rafts; male rafts are typically larger than female ones, and the largest ever recorded held more than 2,000 sea otters.
Q 09Which 1.8-metre Amazon species is the longest member of the weasel family?
Giant otter
The giant otter, up to 1.8 metres long, is the longest member of the weasel family; the Guianas and the Peruvian Amazon remain its strongholds.
Q 10Weighing at most 3.5 kg and measuring under a metre nose to tail, which is the smallest of these species?
Asian small-clawed otter
The Asian small-clawed otter is the world's smallest otter, measuring 73 to 96 cm nose to tail and weighing no more than about 3.5 kg.
Q 11'Otter', from Old English 'otor', shares a Proto-Indo-European root with which everyday English word?
Water
Both 'otter' and 'water' descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *wódr̥, the word for water; the Old English form of the animal's name was otor.
Q 12In water as warm as 10 °C, roughly how much fish does an otter need to catch per hour to survive?
100 grams
About 100 grams of fish an hour is the survival minimum in 10 °C water; otters have high metabolic rates and rely on air trapped in their fur to stay warm.
Q 13In Norse myth, which god killed the dwarf Ótr while he was in otter form?
Loki
Loki struck Ótr with a stone as he ate a salmon in otter form; Ótr's father Hreidmar then demanded the weregild that became the cursed gold of the Völsung saga.
Q 21Gavin Maxwell's 1960 bestseller about living with otters on the Scottish coast is titled what?
Ring of Bright Water
Ring of Bright Water takes its title from Kathleen Raine's 1952 poem 'The Marriage of Psyche'; the 1969 film starred Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna.
Q 22Gavin Maxwell's otter Mijbil, brought back from the marshes of Iraq, was found by London Zoo to be what?
A previously unknown subspecies
Mijbil proved to be a previously unknown subspecies of the smooth-coated otter, named Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli, or Maxwell's otter, in his honour.
Q 23Henry Williamson's 1927 novel Tarka the Otter is set in which English county?
Devon
Q 14In Japanese folklore the otter, or kawauso, tricks humans in the same way as which two other shapeshifting animals?
Foxes and tanuki
Foxes and tanuki are the otter's fellow tricksters; stories from Ishikawa Prefecture have kawauso shapeshifting into beautiful women or children in checked clothing.
Q 15Which religion classes the otter as a clean animal whose killing is a grave sin?
Zoroastrianism
In Zoroastrianism the otter is a clean creature of Ahura Mazda; the Vendidad devotes a chapter to the heavy penalties for killing a 'water dog', its word for the otter.
Q 16The Japanese otter, Lutra nippon, is believed to have gone extinct in roughly which year?
1979
The Japanese otter was last officially sighted in 1979, at Susaki in Kōchi Prefecture; Japan's Environment Ministry formally declared the species extinct in 2012.
Q 17Between 1741 and 1911 the world sea otter population was hunted for fur down to roughly how many animals?
1,000 to 2,000
The fur trade cut a population once estimated at 150,000 to 300,000 down to just 1,000 to 2,000 animals by 1911, when an international treaty banned the hunt.
Q 18Sea otters protect kelp forests by controlling populations of what?
Sea urchins
Sea urchins would otherwise inflict extensive damage on kelp forests; to stay warm, sea otters must eat an estimated 25 to 38 percent of their body weight every day.
Q 19Where on its body does a sea otter store collected food, and sometimes a favourite rock, while diving?
In a loose skin pouch under each foreleg
A loose skin pouch under each foreleg, mostly the left one, holds prey and a favourite rock; freeing an abalone clinging with 4,000 times its weight can take several dives.
Q 20To avoid drifting out to sea while resting, sea otters wrap themselves in what?
Kelp
Mothers also anchor floating pups in kelp while they forage; a groomed newborn holds so much air it floats like a cork and cannot dive.
Tarka roams the Taw and Torridge rivers of north Devon; the novel won the 1928 Hawthornden Prize and gave its name to the Tarka Trail.
Q 24According to Henry Williamson, the name 'Tarka' means what?
Wandering as Water
When the book appeared otters were widely seen as vermin; Tarka and its 1979 film are credited with changing public attitudes.
Q 25The earliest records of fishing with trained otters come from China's Yangtze region in which dynasty?
Tang
Fishing with trained otters on the Yangtze is first recorded in China's Tang dynasty (618–907); the otters were trained to drive fish into the fishermen's nets.
Q 26The marine otter of Chile and Peru, the smallest marine mammal, is known in Spanish by what nickname?
Gato marino (sea cat)
Chileans call the marine otter gato marino ('sea cat'); its scientific name Lontra felina likewise means 'feline otter', and it weighs only 3 to 5 kg.
Q 27The giant otter's Brazilian nickname onça-d'água likens it to which animal?
Jaguar
Onça-d'água means 'water jaguar', onça being the Portuguese word for the jaguar; the giant otter is also called ariranha and lives in family groups of three to eight.
Q 28Giant otter poaching for its pelt peaked in which decades, leaving fewer than 5,000 in the wild?
The 1950s and 1960s
Pelt hunting peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, when giant otter skins left the Amazon by the thousand; the IUCN listed the species as endangered in 1999.
Q 29At which CITES level has the Asian small-clawed otter been listed since August 2019?
Appendix I
CITES CoP18 in Geneva voted in August 2019 to move the Asian small-clawed otter from Appendix II to Appendix I, banning international commercial trade in the species.
Q 30The African clawless otter ranks where in size among freshwater otters?
Second-largest
The African clawless otter is the second-largest freshwater otter, behind only the giant otter; its genus name Aonyx means 'without claw' and its feet are only partly webbed.