What do you think of this fact?
Imagine falling asleep on an air mattress in the ocean and waking up a few miles down the coast. For sea otters, that would be a real problem, since they spend almost their entire lives in the water. Their solution: they tie themselves down, using seaweed.
An anchor made of kelp
Sea otters live along the coasts of the North Pacific, often in big kelp forests. Kelp is a giant brown seaweed. To rest, otters float on their backs at the surface.
To keep the current from pulling them out to sea, they wrap themselves in long strands of kelp. The seaweed works like an anchor. They don’t just do this while sleeping, but while eating too.
Better together
Sea otters hunt alone but like to rest in groups. These groups are called rafts. A raft usually has 10 to 100 animals. The biggest one ever seen had over 2000 sea otters.
And then there are those famous photos: sleeping sea otters holding paws. That really happens. But the classic way to stay put is still kelp.
Fur instead of blubber
Why do they need so much rest in the first place? Sea otters have an exhausting lifestyle. Unlike most marine mammals, they have no insulating layer of blubber. The only thing keeping them warm is their super dense fur, with up to 150,000 hairs per square centimeter. To keep it working, they groom it constantly and blow air into it.
That burns a lot of energy. A sea otter has to eat an estimated 25 to 38 percent of its body weight every single day. To crack open clams and sea urchins, they put a rock on their chest and smash their prey against it.
Sea otter moms rest their pups on their own chests to keep them out of the cold water.
Cuddling, tools, a built-in anchor: you can’t really set yourself up much better on the open ocean.