Courtesy of the St. Louis Aquarium
When the St. Louis Aquarium opens in Union Station this December, its inventory won't just include fish. Three 9-month-old North American River Otters from Flamingo Gardens in Florida are the aquarium's first residents to arrive in St. Louis and are patiently waiting to move into their new habitat and exhibit.
But first things first, the trio need names. That's where St. Louisans come in: The St. Louis Aquarium has announced a naming contest for the new otter family. Aaron Sprowl, the aquarium's curator, says the naming contest is a way to involve the St. Louis community in the aquarium's journey.
“This is something [the St. Louis community] has been wanting for a long time and something they are finally getting an opportunity to have in their backyard,” Sprowl says. “It’s only right that they get the opportunity to name some of our iconic animals.”
On the aquarium's Facebook page, users can cast their vote on their favorite set of names: Splish, Splash, and Dash (the natural activities of an otter) Hopper, Zephyr, and Harvey (after old train cars), and Thatcher, Sawyer, and Finn (after the famous Mark Twain storybook characters).
While waiting to be moved to their new habitat, the critters have been housed at the World Bird Sanctuary, where the aquariums animal care manager Kat Echevarria has been training the otters for the past two months. She describes the otters as energetic and always on the move.
“They are just nonstop ‘What are we doing now? What’s going on over there? That might be more fun!’' Echevarria says. "Then, they are taking off in this direction and that and interacting with each other and everything seems more fun than the next." The otters have what Echevarria calls their own “otteralities” that make each unique.
“They are definitely different. They look very similar, so we had to have teeny, tiny little things to be able to tell them apart, physically, until we did get to know them better. I can now tell who's who by how they’re behaving,” Echevarria says.
The otters are being trained to recognize different colored and shaped targets. Each otter has learned to pick out and stand at their assigned target: a yellow triangle, a red square, and a blue circle. Echevarria says her training is really about getting to know the otters, finding effective ways to communicate, and making them feel comfortable in their new homes.
Other featured animals will include animals native to Mississippi River, including paddlefish, alligator gar, and surgeonfish, as well as underwater creatures from the Amazon and "riverways of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia." The aquatic animals can be found in three galleries: Shard Canyon, featuring over 80 varieties of sharks and rays; The Deep, where jellyfish, eels, and sea dragons will live; and Changing Rivers, which the to-be-named otters and other freshwater aquatic animals will call home.
Want to have a say in what the aquarium's first residents will be called? Vote for your favorite set of names on the aquarium's Facebook page before Monday, September 23.
