With their roly-poly bodies, child-like eyes, long whiskers and tiny padded paws, otters are some of the most charismatic animals in nature. But while being cute doesn't serve much purpose in the wild, new research suggests these little furballs have been helping mitigate climate change.
A recent study in the journal PLOS Climate, led by researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, details how southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris) off the coast of California have helped kelp forests remain resilient to the impacts of climate change. First the scientists analyzed US government records that inventoried California kelp forests as far back as 1910, compared them with modern information about those same kelp forests today. Then they used a machine learning framework to ascertain and rank the factors that have altered kelp forest density since 1910.
