Singapore is being 'terrorized' by otters, each of their meals can be worth thousands of dollars!

Singapore's otters have proved extremely innocent when entering the residential area, they eat the pet fish of the local people and there have been cases of them eating expensive koi fish. many Singaporeans keep in private ponds.

It's hard to say how many otters live in this nation of 5.7 million people, but residents have noted a growing number of attacks from 10 families of otters believed to inhabit the island. .

In 2020, a group of otters known as the Zouk family (named for a local nightclub) got inspired to "behave" into a local apartment complex. The group then raided the house's koi pond, after which they roamed around and took the koi fish in the pond away.

Singapore is known as a crowded and bustling country. However, in the heart of the city, there is still a community of wild otters living and growing.

In early 2021, a school of otters snuck into a local church and killed nearly 100 fish in a few days - about half of which were koi fry.

And just last week, a school of otters attacked a private koi pond in the northeast of the city. The 60-year-old owner said he has taken care of some of the fish since they were young, and that some of his longtime pet koi, which have grown to about 60 centimeters in length, have also been eaten by the otters.

The smooth-haired otter or the fluffy otter is a species with a long, flexible body. The snout is short, slightly flattened in width, the head is relatively round. Bare skin swimming membrane covers all fingers. Long, sharp claws. The ears are larger than normal otter ears, the earlobes are round, with a cover over the ear holes. The coat is gray to tawny, similar to that of a common otter, but longer and smoother. Upper lip, cheeks, throat and neck milky white; This white part extends to the chest. Lighter belly feathers on the back. The distinctive feature that differs from other otters is the flattened tail on both sides of the paddle.

The average lifespan of a koi is about 40 years, according to the National Zoo of Singapore, but they can live much longer; A Japanese koi lives to be 226 years old. Plus, Philip Johns, a biologist at Singapore's Yale-NUS University, says koi fish in Singapore are extremely expensive. Some rare ornamental koi fish can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, depending on the color and pattern of the fish. A 2018 Japanese koi auction saw one fish sell for $1.8 million.

The Straits Times cites My Paper as reporting that between 2015 and 2016, a group of otters destroyed about $64,000 of a homeowner's koi fish on the Singapore resort island of Sentosa. Also in 2015, the otters cleared a koi pond at Shangri-la Resort, located on the same island - with an estimated fish value of around $80,000.

The otter is an animal native to Singapore.

The otters are native to Singapore, but there were times when they were near extinction - Massive development in the 1960s and 1970s destroyed the animal's habitat and leading to widespread pollution. However, in the late 1970s, as Singapore began to address its environmental problems, otter families slowly returned.

Most of the otters living in the city of Singapore today are fluffy otters (weighing about 10 kg) and the few remaining are small clawed otters. Under the country's national park system, Singapore's otter population is still listed as critically endangered, but Johns said Singapore's otter gardens are now increasing in numbers.

After the "behaviors" of otters, some Singaporeans have begun to regard otters as annoying animals. In 2020, following a series of attacks on aquarium fish, a Straits Times reader wrote to him with recommendations on how to keep the species out of urban areas.

"Wild boars have never been encouraged to enter urban areas, and neither should otters, no matter how cute they look," wrote reader Ong Junkai.

On a post about the animals due in 2021, one Facebook commenter wrote: "Wow, must put a few more crocodiles in the lake, see if they can help."

A wild otter eats fish at the Marina Reservoir in Singapore.

Some residents joked that otters that gather in groups of 14 to 18 should be punished for violating the country's COVID-19 safety rules, which have limited group sizes to less than two or five years. or eight people at various points over the course of the past few years.

The growth of urban otters is partly due to Singapore's coronavirus containment measures, which brought the country into a near-total shutdown from April to June last year.

Johns said: 'As people social distance, the otters have become bolder. Basically, no one showed up on the street. When you look out from your balcony you will see the empty roads, and I think at that point the otters have 'taken' all the roads."