Rarely seen animals in Taiwan

Wonder if these are river or sea otters. Guessing river.

They go from the river to the sea.

Wikipedia says vulnerable and endangered. Rare, but have. I was beside a river

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It looks unlikely except in Kinmen. You sure they weren’t weasels?

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Based on what is on Wikipedia, the weasels would be the wrong color. And I think, too small. I got a good look at the face of one and I’m confident it was an otter. I wasn’t on a busy road, was beside a large national forest area.

Nothing else on wikipedia looks quite right…

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Crab eating mongoose?

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I’m gonna stick with otters

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Really? The official stance is that otters are extinct on the home island, and only Kimmen has a few left.

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If it wasn’t 2 otters, I don’t know what it was. Wrong size, face, and color to be anything else…

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Crab eating mongoose hangout around rivers here .

One of these anyway.

Yeah, but the color and shape is wrong. Especially the face, which I had a good look at. Full on, 4 or 5 seconds. The CEM has a long face with a bright orange nose

I checked that list after I saw the animals, and I really do think it was an otter (2, actually). Maybe the cold has pushed them down from higher up, or typhoon damage to their home?

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If it is, this would be a pretty big sighting.

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I stopped the next day on my way out and looked around a bit, phone off the bike mount and ready in my hands with the camera app open, but didn’t see anything…

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I assume it looked more alive than this specimen.

From the above article, still it would be hard for them to hide from camera traps. Is this where you were ? Zhiben river valley?

According to Dr. Kurtis Pei (裴家騏), professor of wildlife conservation, the last confirmed sighting of an otter in Taiwan was in Zhiben River (知本) in Taitung County in the wilderness upriver from the hot springs — a place I’ve been spending time in this year.

A member of an Indigenous tribe from Pingtung told me he believes that otters persist in the most difficult to reach gorges of the central mountain range

Yes, and darker face

Are there lots of camera traps set up looking for them?

Even if the Indigenous were catching them with the illegal traps that keep make 3 legged dogs, they wouldn’t be advertising that

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I would have guessed there would be some surveying going on . I know they do it for the bears up there.

A camera trap set for a bear (height and location) might catch an otter, if there are enough of them running around!

That’s interesting.

It wasn’t interesting when I shared the article with you yesterday?
:thinking:

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If I looked at it it would have been :flushed:

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