International Giant Otter Studbook Husbandry and Management

these births may go undetected. Ultrasounds are very helpful to help determine if mother’s are
actually pregnant, to check health and uterine condition, rule out false pregnancies, and to help
make preparation to provide isolation to the parents when needed etc. (See Chapter 1 Section
4).
Because of Katja’s reproductive problems (see under Dortmund Zoo in Chapter 1 Section 4), we
were increasingly worried about her health. It became highly important for us to monitor her
further pregnancies (i.e. to determine and/or study pregnancy and uterine condition before birth
and after litter loss) with the help of frequent ultrasound examinations.
The only practical way to accomplish this was through husbandry training. Another important
goal of the training is the collection of a milk (i.e. lactation) sample. The specific composition
of giant otter milk (i.e. percentages / types of fat, protein, lactose, etc.) is either unknown or
unreported. It has to be pointed out that samples must be gathered after litter loss only to
prevent human disturbances to parents. Unfortunately, the only sample drawn at Dortmund Zoo
was lost due to technical reasons. Additional captive females, world-wide, should be trained to
allow milk samples to be drawn after litter loss.
Giant otters are very intelligent, playful and curious animals, which like other otters, like to
investigate everything very thoroughly. Nevertheless, training can be quite difficult. Giant
otters have a low attention span for focusing on objects for any extended period of time. The
training situation must be as fun and stimulating as possible to keep the otters attention. At
Dortmund, we have found that it is often difficult to station a giant otter for much longer than
15 to 30 seconds, but occasionally 45 seconds and times up to 1½ minutes have been
accomplished. Although, with a different training technique, that only has been used on one
giant otter that is kept singly at Dortmund, we are able to perform husbandry procedures for up
to a half-hour or more (see below).
This species is potentially very dangerous and serious injuries, even causing death in some
cases, have been reported when people entered giant otter exhibits. Therefore, all training has
to be done through a protective fence or lattice. It is very important for the trainer to pay a lot
of attention to the animals as well as to the interaction of the animals with each other. It seems
that especially the females are often jealous regarding a trainer’s attention towards her mate and
also regarding food rewards, resulting in fights during the training. These fights usually only
last a couple seconds but the resulting stress and tension make the extended stationing which is
needed for ultrasound examinations nearly impossible. Fights can be mostly avoided if both
animals are only rewarded with small pieces of food and if the distance between them during
training is big enough. In addition, variations in the training program can help to prevent
aggressive behavior.
Katja was four and Kuddel was six years old when we first started training them. Both had no
experience with being trained before. Initial training included mainly target follows, including
climbing up in the exhibit lattice, shape and color discrimination as well as scale training. Katja
was also conditioned to accept different types of body examinations by the trainer’s hand, while
she was climbed up in the lattice. Clearly, a key to training success is the use of small but
frequent reinforcers. Mackerel is our giant otters’ favorite food. It is not part of their normal
diet because of the high fat content but it is very valuable in small amounts as a training reward.
Initially, a whistle was used as bridge while we currently use the verbal bridge “good” instead.
The otters can target, with either their paws or nose, or both. It is the otters’ natural tendency to
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