An otter of waterways in Eurasia and northern Africa. It catches fish and other prey in water and rests in sheltered places on land.
Its elongated body ends in a tapering tail. Dense brown fur is lighter on the underside.
Eurasian otters eat fish from rivers and the sea. At Boujagh National Park, where a river meets the Caspian Sea in Iran, spraints contained carp relatives as well as mullet and pipefish. These food remains reveal a varied fish menu at the meeting of fresh and marine waters.
A study published in 2024 examined 615 spraints collected in the park, washing them and identifying bones and other remains under microscopes. Insects, shrimp, frogs and birds appeared alongside fish. Snake and lizard remains occurred in warm-period samples but were absent from cold-period samples. Fish dominated the diet, accompanied by a range of smaller waterside animals. The records show varied seasonal foods in a park combining rivers, wetlands and shallow coastal waters.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Natural Resources Wales and Cardiff University cooperate in surveys of Eurasian otter distribution using spraints and footprints. Their official announcement in 2021 reported signs at 756 of 1,073 sites visited in 2015–2018. The proportion of positive sites had fallen from about 90% in 2010 to about 70%. At the time, NRW stated that it was working with specialists to investigate the reasons and was developing a river restoration programme intended to benefit otters and other riverside wildlife.