Demand for cute selfies puts otters at risk

Popular Instagrammers posting selfies with their pet otter may simply be seeking to warm the hearts of their sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers, but animal protection groups say the trend is posing an existential threat to the silky mammal.“The illegal trade in otters has suddenly increased exponentially,” Nicole Duplaix, who cochairs the Otter Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told Agence France-Presse .

Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species , currently in Geneva to evaluate and fine-tune the treaty that manages trade in more than 35,000 species of plants and animals, will consider proposals to increase protection of two particularly imperiled otter species.

Popular figures on Instagram and Facebook often rake in thousands of gushing comments about their otter pictures, such as “cuteness overload,” “otterly adorable,” and “want one!”Duplaix acknowledged that otters were “very charismatic creatures,” saying “it is the cute factor that is causing their demise.”

Amid the growing demand for pet otters, hunters and fishermen in Indonesia and Thailand especially are increasingly killing adult otters and snatching the babies, which are caged and shipped off to become exotic pets.Several “otter cafés” have also popped up in the country, with patrons urged to buy small pieces of food to feed the caged mammals and to snap a selfie with them while drinking a coffee.

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