Singapore’s otters, long adored by the city-state’s nature lovers, are popping up in unexpected places during the COVID-19 lockdown, but their antics have angered some and even sparked calls for a cull.
With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping center, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey fish stolen from a pond.
While many think of tiny Singapore as a densely populated concrete jungle, it is also relatively green for a busy Asian city, and has patches of rainforest, fairly clean waterways and abundant wildlife.
Photo: AFP
There are estimated to be about 90 otters in Singapore, making up 10 families, and appearances at popular tourist sites around the downtown waterfront have transformed the animals into local celebrities.
They featured in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough, are tracked avidly by the local media — and have been spotted more frequently since people were asked to stay home and workplaces closed last month to fight the virus.
“When there’s restriction of movement, there’s less vehicles and there’s less people, so the urban space opens up,” said N. Sivasothi, a biologist at the National University of Singapore who is known as “Otterman” due to his work on the animals.
However, their newfound freedoms appear to have emboldened the otters, and they are now facing a backlash.
The most high-profile incident was a raid on a pond at a spa shuttered due to the pandemic. The creatures gobbled several fish, including an arowana, a prized species that can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Actress-turned-entrepreneur Jazreel Low, who owns the spa, posted pictures on Facebook of fish parts scattered around the pond and lamented a “massacre.”
“They probably realized that there was nobody there and became more daring,” Low told entertainment news Web site 8 DAYS.
The case sparked a debate about whether more should be done to stop otters rampaging through Singapore, with a widely discussed letter in a local newspaper calling for air horns and rubber bullets to be used as deterrents.
“Wild boars have never been encouraged to enter urban areas, neither should otters be just because they look cute,” wrote Ong Junkai in the correspondence to the Straits Times, which triggered calls from some for a cull.
In other incidents, a video showed a group of otters charging into the lobby of a children’s hospital before being shooed away, and the creatures were also filmed frolicking in the empty streets outside a popular shopping center.
The otters’ more frequent forays onto the streets of Singapore are part of a global trend triggered by virus lockdowns, with animals increasingly slipping cover to explore the streets of some of the world’s biggest cities.
Still, otter experts believe the anger is an overreaction and that the creatures are likely just enjoying the extra freedom to venture to new places.
Sivasothi criticized calls for a cull as “quite an uneducated response,” and said that such a move would be ineffective.
He also said many recent sightings were likely of the same family of smooth-coated otters, which have been searching for a new home along the city’s rivers. Most of Singapore’s otters are the smooth-coated variety, classified as “vulnerable.”
Fans believe people should be celebrating the return of an animal that was driven out of Singapore by coastal development and water pollution in around the 1970s, and only started reappearing in the 1990s as waterways were cleaned.
“I simply don’t understand anyone who could not like them. They are really cute,” said Pam Wong, a 35-year-old Singaporean.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) weighed in on the debate on Friday, posting on Facebook a photograph he took of otters before the lockdown began.
“Rather than being focused on protecting ‘territory,’ we must find ways to coexist and thrive with our local flora and fauna,” he wrote.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS