Measuring up to almost two metres (6 feet) long, the giant otter is the largest of its kind.<\/p>\n
Found in the Amazon, Orinoco and R\u00edo de la Plata River systems of South America, these highly social creatures build underground burrows which can house large family groups.<\/p>\n
They primarily eat fish (such as perch, catfish and even piranha<\/a>), but will also hunt crabs, snakes and even small anacondas<\/a> and caimans.<\/p>\n When filming for Giant Otters of the Amazon<\/a> (a 2013 episode of the BBC TV series Natural World), wildlife filmmaker Charlie Hamilton-Jones followed one particular family of otters, headed up by Diablo, who resides with six cubs in a Peruvian lake.<\/p>\n As one of the toughest creatures in the Amazon jungle, giant otters are surrounded by black caimans, anacondas, jaguars<\/a> and pumas<\/a>.<\/p>\n But they are also highly territorial, and the animals the giant otters hunt can also pose a threat to their offspring.<\/p>\n And during filming, Charlie Hamilton-Jones captures \u201cnearly an hour of brutal fighting\u201d between the family and a caiman who refuses to back down. But who will win out?<\/p>\n Top image: a yacare caiman in the\u00a0Cuiaba River, in Mata Grosso, Brazil. Credit: Jami Tarris\/Getty Images. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Measuring up to almost two metres (6 feet) long, the giant otter is the largest of its kind.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-304313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}