How to Track Otters

Video Transcript

"Hi we’re Nick and Valerie Wisniewski on behalf of Expert Village.com. We would like to show you how to identify river otter tracks in the wild and for more information, you can check our website at www.walnuthilltracking.com. The river otter is a large member of the weasel family and like other members of the weasel family, it has 5 toes on both the hind foot and the front foot that show up in their track. The otter has very well developed elongated toes and on this particular plastic cast you can see a lot of connective tissue between the toe pads and the palm pad. The palm pad has a c-shape which is characteristic of the weasel family. We would like to show you one of the most common patterns that the river otter makes is what is called a fore bound and in this pattern, the two front feet hit the ground and then the hind feet. So the sequence is front, front , hind, hind. Sometimes it could be a front with a hind in the middle which would tend to more indicative of a lope than a gallop. Some of the characteristics you look for in river otter trail is that it tends to take very short bounds somewhere between 6 and 20 inches or so. In this particular case, we’ve laid down a trail where the bounds are about 14 inches in between. In the group lengths or group of 4, are also relatively short in this case a little over 15 inches. The overall impression that you get when you see a river otter pattern on the ground is that it is boxy or square shaped as opposed to a fisher which is another large member of the weasel family which leaves a very elongated pattern. The otter pattern is very boxy and square. "