Exploring Kootenay Lake

Seasonal bunny: This hare showed insensitivity to mythology by neither laying nor hiding eggs.

A hare’s hair moults.

Our local snowshoe hare (we don’t have rabbits around here) is white in winter and rusty brown in summer.

The transition between white and brown is determined by day length, rather than snow cover, so sometimes there is a mismatch with surroundings that makes a hare vulnerable to predation. Indeed, it can live or die when its coat does, or does not, provide adequate camouflage.

This was the first time I had seen a hare midway in its moult from white to rusty brown.

A travelling animal can employ various gaits, a word that describes the pattern of movement of limbs during locomotion. A bipedal human might walk, hop, or run, each a different form of propulsion. The transition from one gait to another takes place when the energy it takes for, say, a fast walk begins to exceed that of a slow run. Quadrupeds, such as a horse, deer, or dog often have a wider range of choices which might include: walk, amble, pace, trot, canter, gallop, run, or stot. 

A trotting mule deer is in suspension (2011).

A characteristic of some of the faster gaits is a period of suspension: a time when all four feet are off the ground. It seems that the faster the animal moves, the longer the period of suspension: Aerial time matters for speed.

Many rapidly moving quadrupeds exhibit a period of suspension.

Do otters?

A 2002 paper that studied the running energetics of the River Otter noted that:

… the ability to incorporate a period of suspension during high speed running was an important compensatory mechanism for short limbs…. Such an aerial period was not observed in river otters….

An otter family walking; None are in suspension (2015).

It is interesting that the authors of this study did not see a running otter in suspension. I do not know how the paper’s authors motivated the otters to run, yet that motivation clearly wasn’t sufficient to prompt them to excel.

I recently watched two otters in suspension while they were running and the motivation seemed to be purely that of having fun — otters, after all, will be otters.

This running otter is in suspension. It was racing along a dock before making a great leap into the water — rather like a child racing up a diving board before leaping off the end. The first otter was followed by a second that did likewise. It seems that pleasing a researcher isn’t as important to a River Otter as having fun.

When climbing out of the Lake, many animals disperse water by twisting and shaking. Dogs do it, eagles do it, and otters do it. 

While I had seen otters spin their heads to shake off water, I had not photographed it — that is, until two days ago.

Two River Otters frolicked on a dock. In turn, each twisted to shake off water from immersion.

Sometimes camouflage allows wildlife to pass almost unnoticed.