A River Otter's, Lontra canadensis, Capture of a Double-crested Cormorant, Phalacrocorax auritus, in British Columbia's Gulf Island Waters
Open accessAbstract
Direct and apparent predation events by River Otters (Lontra canadensis) on birds have been recorded on marine islands and freshwater lakes. We add to this the first known observation of a River Otter capturing a marine bird on the ocean.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
This underwater attack strategy is very similar to that observed on freshwater lakes where river otters hunt waterfowl.
“a very similar strategy that has been observed on freshwater lakes where river otters hunt waterfowl (Reid et al. 1994; Price and Aries 2007).”
From River Otter Predation of Nesting Seabirds Along the Coasts of North America (2025) · cites this paper as Price and Aries 2007
The observation account (pp. 325–326) describes otters diving toward cormorants in marine waters. The discussion reports otters preying on moulting waterfowl on a freshwater lake, but does not describe how they attacked there, so it does not establish that the underwater strategies were very similar. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 9
- Bowyer, R. T., J. W. Testa, J. B. Faro, C. C. Schwartz, and J. B. Browning. 1994. Changes in the diet of river otters in Prince William Sound, Alaska: effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Canadian Journal of Zoology 72: 970-976.
- Knudsen, G. J., and J. B. Hale. 1968. Food habits of otters in the Great Lakes region. Journal of Wildlife Management 32: 89-93.
- Lagler, K. F., and B. T. Ostenson. 1942. Early spring food of the otter in Michigan. Journal of Wildlife Management 6: 245-254.
- Meyerriecks, A. J. 1963. Florida otter preys on common gallinule. Journal of Mammalogy 44: 425-426.
- Quinlan, S. E. 1983. Avian and river otter predation in a storm-petrel colony. Journal of Wildlife Management 47: 1036-1043.
- Reid, D. G., T. E. Code, A. C. H. Reid, and S. M. Herrero. 1994. Food habits of the river otter in a boreal ecosystem. Canadian Journal of Zoology 72: 1306-1313.
- Sheldon W. G., and W. G. Toll. 1964. Feeding habits of the river otter in a reservoir in central Massachusetts. Journal of Mammalogy 45: 449-455.
- Stenson, G. B., G. A. Badgero, and H. D. Fisher. 1984. Food habits of the river otter Lontra canadensis in the marine environment of British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Zoology 62: 88-91.
- Toweill, D. E. 1974. Winter food habits of river otters in western Oregon. Journal of Wildlife Management 38: 107- 111.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
River Otter Predation of Nesting Seabirds Along the Coasts of North America
Stuntz, L., & Orben, R. A. (2025) · Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.1002/ece3.72118
“…swam underwater and attacked seabirds from below, restraining their legs in their jaws and drowning them before returning to shore to consume the carcass—a very similar strategy that has been observed on freshwater lakes where river otters hunt waterfowl (Reid et al. 1994; Price and Aries 2007).”
- Authors
- Price, M. H. H., & Aries, C. E.
- Affiliations
- Raincoast Conservation Foundation (CA)
- Royal British Columbia Museum (CA)
- ORCID
- Price, Michael H. H.
- Venue
- The Canadian Field-Naturalist
- Publisher
- Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club
- Published
- 2007-07-01
- Volume
- 121
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 325
- ISSN
- 0008-3550 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2218905763
- Cited by
- 2
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- The Canadian Field-Naturalist (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Biodiversity Heritage Library (Smithsonian Institution) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Marine animal studies overview
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Avian ecology and behavior
- Keywords
- river otter, Lontra canadensis, double-crested cormorant, Phalacrocorax auritus, predation, seabirds, predator-prey interactions, Gulf Islands, British Columbia
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
