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Rare small-clawed otter heads to Hualien park

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17th March, 2008

Taipei Times, Taiwan

A rare oriental small-clawed otter raised in the Taipei City Zoo will be transferred to an ocean park in eastern Taiwan today to be used in a breeding program, the zoo announced yesterday.

The male otter, named Pipi, is four years old and is mature. As the zoo has only two male otters, it decided to transfer Pipi for three years to Hualien Ocean Park, which has one male and four female otters, in the hope that he will breed with one of the females, zoo officials said.

Pipi was abandoned in 2006 by his breeder when he was 18 months old.

Measuring about 0.9m in length and weighing 5kg, the oriental small-clawed otter is the smallest of its kind in the world. It lives mainly in wetlands in Asia.

The gestation period is two months and there are usually one or two kits in a litter. The oriental small-clawed otter is evaluated as "near threatened" on the list of Threatened Species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.