SINGAPORE: Since 2017, Ms Marjorie Chong has loved watching otters. She\u2019s an active member of the Otter Working Group, and usually goes to watch the semiaquatic animals two to three times a week.<\/p>\n
But there can be too much of a good thing \u2013 she once spent about 400 hours looking for otters over two months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two months felt very long,\u201d Ms Chong said with a laugh. \u201cBut we believed in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She and 20 other otter watchers were helping to collect data for Singapore\u2019s third population census of smooth-coated otters, photographing them and noting down relevant information.<\/p>\n
That data was then verified by Ms Michelle Tan, who was working on the census for her final-year project as a life sciences student at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She submitted the project in April 2025.<\/p>\n
The census is undergoing scientific review and will be published later this year.<\/p>\n
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE<\/p>\n
Ms Tan was new to otter watching when she embarked on her final-year project, so the first step was to receive an orientation from those who were more experienced.<\/p>\n
They are familiar with where the otters might be, but even then, the creatures could prove elusive.<\/p>\n
\u201cA refrain that you hear often is, oh the otters, they are everywhere \u2026 but when you actually count them, (they are) not that easy to find,\u201d said Ms Chong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SINGAPORE: Since 2017, Ms Marjorie Chong has loved watching otters. She\u2019s an active member of the Otter Working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,144957,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-487221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-otters","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}