Daniel the otter
Daniel
Daniel is one of the rescued animals that we are happy to have been able to help raise until he was ready to live in his natural environment in freedom.
Daniel is a giant river otter pup. He had been poached and sold to a lodge, which intended to exhibit it in their private zoo for tourists. We found him in a sack, malnourished, dehydrated, and very shaken.
Daniel arrived to us in September 2018, from a tip through our wildlife rescue WhatsApp chat that we have here in the Amazon. We were sent pictures of what appeared to be an otter inside a sack on a boat, that was docked in the port of Nauta (a small town 65 miles (ca. 105 km) outside of Iquitos) destined for a lodge.
We quickly sent the images to the corresponding wildlife entity (ARA) and got an immediate reaction and confiscation by those authorities of a sloth and an otter.
Quickly we got our team together, along with 3 volunteers and went to the ARA offices in Nauta, and found to our surprise that we had a 3-month-old GIANT RIVER OTTER on our hands.
Giant river otters are very social animals. In the wild, they live in groups, and have developed a language of sorts -- they are very vocal. Daniel is no exception, and he constantly "spoke" at his caretakers for attention, playtime, and food.
During 2 years, we've had the privilege to be able to show Daniel how to swim, eat, and catch live fish, and what our staff loved most of all, was showed him what feels like to swim in a social group as he will be doing in the wild.
After Daniel's arrival, we've never had silence at RAREC, he could be heard on every voice note that we sent and everyone loved it. We put him in charge of the authorities to be relocated in a Natural Reserve, where we know he is very happy now. He has stolen all of our heart's with his charming ways, and vocal antics, Daniel quickly became a favorite of our volunteers and our online followers.
We will always miss Daniel but we have the satisfaction of having helped him and that the experience of taking care of him left us much more prepared to save others of his kind!
If you want to volunteer with us and be part of similar experiences, you can contact RAREC Administrator at rarec.center.adm@gmail.com, and we will send you more details about our programs.