Great Lakes Otters Are a Conservation Success Story with Populations Flourishing in US and Ontario

A river otter the moment it was released into the Rio Grande – Credit J.N. Stuart, CC 2.0.

In 1986, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources began reintroducing North American river otters to the rivers, creeks, and shorelines of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

40 years later, these adorable apex predators have recolonized much of their former aquatic acreage in Ohio, New York, Michigan, and Ontario, fastening the food chain at the top while ecosystem restoration programs have anchored it at the bottom.

The Great Lakes region holds one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. It’s a massive ecosystem that supports tens of millions of people, tens of billions in industry, and thousands of animal and plant species.

Unfortunately for the otter, an apex predator needs a vast and intact ecosystem to thrive, and as industrialization ate away at its prey species and den habitat, hunters reduced their numbers in pursuit of their pelts.

In 1980, an examination conducted on US river otter populations determined they were locally extinct in 11 states, and lost significant population in 9 other states.

It’s a story all-too-familiar the world over, but one that seems now to have had a happy ending.

After the Ohio DNR began releasing river otters from southern states like Arkansas and Louisiana, New York state began a mirrored effort of relocating otters from the Adirondacks, the Hudson Valley, and Catskills to the tributaries of the Great Lakes in the western part of the state.

“All of these efforts were bolstered by the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark US–Canada treaty that pushed both countries toward reducing toxic discharges and restoring damaged habitats,” writes Timothy Mihocik at Rewilding Magazine.

Gradual waterfront revitalization and de-industrialization has allowed the otter to go beyond mere sheltered streams in protected areas back into the heart of the Great Lakes ecosystem, a return that also heralds cleaner, uncontaminated water, richer fish stocks, and more biodiverse riverbeds.

GNN has reported over the years that the character of several Midwest rivers, once so polluted they’d catch fire, has now changed. In Toronto, Ohio, and Chicago, rivers are now swimmable and fishable again, and otters stand hugely to benefit from that.Still, North American river otters have remained rare or absent in the southwestern United States. Water quality and development inhibit recovery of populations in some areas, but here too, otters are returning, with the New Mexican population tripling in the last few years. Great Lakes Otters Are a Conservation Success Story with Populations Flourishing in US and Ontario

Read More........→March 21, 2026

Apes Show Ability to Imagine in ‘Tea Party’ Experiments, and Scientists are Very Excited

43-year-old bonobo named Kanzi – Courtesy of Ape Initiative / Johns Hopkins / SWNS

Apes share the human ability to imagine and pretend, suggests new research that included a series of tea party experiments.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, called it the first study to show the capacity for pretending is not unique to mankind.

They learned that apes can use their imagination and play pretend. One bonobo engaged with cups of imaginary juice and bowls of pretend grapes “consistently and robustly” across three experiments, challenging long-held assumptions about the abilities of animals.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that the capacity to understand pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an “enculturated ape”, and likely dates back six to nine million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors.

“It really is game-changing that their mental lives go beyond the here and now,” said study co-author Dr. Christopher Krupenye.

“Imagination has long been seen as a critical element of what it is to be human, but the idea that it may not be exclusive to our species is really transformative.

“Jane Goodall discovered that chimps make tools and that led to a change in the definition of what it means to be human—and this, too, really invites us to reconsider what makes us special and what mental life is out there among other creatures.”

He said that, by the age of two, human children can engage in pretend scenarios, like tea parties. Even at 15-months-old, infants show measures of surprise when they see a person “drinking” from a cup after pretending to empty it.

Credit: Getty Images For Unsplash+

There had been no previous studies of pretend behavior in non-human animals, despite several reports of animals seemingly engaging in pretending behavior from both the wild and in zoos or captivity.

For instance, in the wild, young female chimps have been observed carrying and playing with sticks, holding them like mothers would hold their infants. And a chimp in captivity seemed to drag imaginary blocks along the floor after playing with real wooden blocks.

Dr. Krupenye and co-author Amalia Bastos, a former Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow who is now a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, wondered if they could test the capacity to pretend in a controlled environment.

They created experiments similar to a child’s tea party to test Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo living at Ape Initiative in Iowa, is the world’s only research center and sanctuary dedicated exclusively to the study and conservation of bonobos, our closest primate relative.

Kanzi had been anecdotally reported to engage in pretense, and could respond to verbal prompts by pointing.

In each test, a researcher and Kanzi faced one another, tea party-style, across a table. In the first task there were two transparent cups on the table, both empty, alongside an empty transparent pitcher.

Kanzi – Courtesy of Ape Initiative / Johns Hopkins / SWNS

The researcher tipped the pitcher to “pour” a little pretend juice into each cup, then pretended to dump the juice out of one cup, shaking it a bit to really get it out.

The researcher then asked Kanzi: “Where’s the juice?”

The bonobo pointed to the correct cup that still contained pretend juice, even when the researcher changed the position of the cup filled with pretend juice.

In case Kanzi thought there was real juice in the cup, even if he couldn’t see it, the team ran a second experiment, during which a cup of real juice was placed alongside the cup of pretend juice.

When Kanzi was asked what he wanted, he pointed toward the real juice almost every time.

A third experiment repeated the same concept, except with grapes. A researcher pretended to sample a grape from an empty container, then placed it inside one of the two jars.

After pretending to empty one of the containers, he asked Kanzi: “Where’s the grape?”

Kanzi again indicated the location of the pretend object. The researchers said Kanzi wasn’t perfect, but he was consistently correct.

“It’s extremely striking and very exciting that the data seem to suggest that apes, in their minds, can conceive of things that are not there,” said Dr. Bastos.

“Kanzi is able to generate an idea of this pretend object and, at the same time, know it’s not real.”

The researchers now want to test whether other apes and animals can engage in pretend play or track pretend objects. They also hope to explore other facets of imagination in apes, perhaps their ability to think about the future or to think about what’s going on in the minds of others.

“Imagination is one of those things that in humans gives us a rich mental life,” said Dr. Krupenye.“And if some roots of imagination are shared with apes, that should make people question their assumption that other animals are just living robotic lifestyles constrained to the present. We should be compelled by these findings to care for these creatures with rich and beautiful minds and ensure they continue to exist.” Apes Show Ability to Imagine in ‘Tea Party’ Experiments, and Scientists are Very Excited

Read More........→February 10, 2026