Happy World Otter Day from CUOP! We want to say a huge thank you to our collection network who make what we do possible. In particular @EnvAgency and @NatResWales who do equally amazing work in England and Wales. We received 157 otters thanks to the brilliant people supporting us
We are exploring next steps to investigate the potential cause, which is most likely to be a genetic abnormality, but could be teratogenic chemicals. If there have been other sightings of mammals with no hind limbs in the UK, we would love it if you could get in contact with us!
Otter #4801 is a juvenile found dead near Oxford. The otter was estimated to be approximately 2 months old, but lacked any development of hind limbs or pelvis.
On the 16th February Cardiff University Otter Project held a stall at the 'Be A Scientist' event in Sbarc|Spark. It was wonderful to meet some young aspiring scientists and introduce them to the Otter Project! π¦¦
Our new paper on mitogenome sequences from otter spraint, with Sarah and Jenny as joint first authors, has been featured in an article by https://t.co/4jfDGHo7Os!
Read the article here:
https://t.co/fvHuQDEyGw
It was great to host Dave Groves, from the Cornwall Mammal Group, here at Cardiff University Otter Project. Dave was here to talk about otter diet, and identification of prey remains from spraint.
@WomenScienceDay Featured in the post project lead Elizabeth Chadwick, project officer and PhD student Chloe Hawthorn, PhD students Holly Hulme, Gu Jiaying and Sandra Simoes and placement students Sophie and Sandy. Thank you!! π¦¦π
In honour of International Women and Girls in Science Day (@WomenScienceDay) we wanted to celebrate the brilliant women in our team who help make our work possible.
Sophie and Jacob ran a "Murder Mystery" activity, which allowed the families to conduct their own cause of death investigation from the resources provided. This ran alongside an overview of The Otter Project and our research, and an otter anatomy demonstration.
Last weekend, The Otter Project was invited to run a session for the "Parent Power" event at Cardiff University. The event aimed to introduce students and their parents to higher education and support widening participation.
On otters, Otter Project lead Dr Liz Chadwick talked to Fiona about what we have learned from post mortems. The podcast is an hour long and can be found here if you would like to listen to it https://t.co/RdqJckmDBR.
Last year we participated in a project, 'Tonal' which focuses on issues linked to water. Fiona MacDonald (@feralpractice) has created a series of podcasts, each of which is a conversation with someone who has either a professional or personal interest in water and rivers.