otor

Otter comes from Old English otor, from Proto-Germanic *utraz, from Proto-Indo-European *udréh₂ (water animal), from *wed- (water). The same root gives Sanskrit udra, Greek hýdra (water serpent), and Latin lutra (otter, with an added 'l'). The otter is, etymologically, 'the water creature.' The name predates English, predates Germanic languages, and goes back to the shared ancestor of most European and South Asian languages.

Otters were common throughout Europe for most of history. The Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) was hunted for its dense, waterproof fur — one of the finest in the animal kingdom, with up to 100,000 hairs per square centimeter. Otter hunting was a sport in England from the medieval period through the twentieth century. The last otter hunt in England took place in 1978, two years after the otter received legal protection.

Sea otters of the Pacific coast have a separate but related history. Russian, Spanish, and British fur traders hunted them nearly to extinction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — at their low point in 1911, fewer than 2,000 sea otters survived worldwide. The International Fur Seal Treaty of 1911 protected them. Sea otters are now famous for floating on their backs, using rocks as tools to crack open shellfish, and wrapping themselves in kelp to avoid drifting while sleeping.

Otters are now popular animals in conservation messaging, zoos, and social media. Videos of otters holding hands while sleeping (sea otters do this to stay together in groups called rafts) have been viewed billions of times. The animal that was hunted for its fur became the animal that sells conservation. The water creature's public relations have improved dramatically.