{"id":416855,"date":"2026-07-29T18:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416855\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T18:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:21:09","slug":"these-bay-area-river-otters-have-developed-a-taste-for-pelicans-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416855\/","title":{"rendered":"These Bay Area River Otters Have Developed A Taste for Pelicans: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In her study, Isadore refers to river otters as &#8220;opportunistic predators whose diet varies seasonally according to availability of prey species.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>River otters are small and typically measure up to two-and-a-half feet to five feet long. They eat fish, crabs, birds, reptiles and frogs, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nwf.org\/Educational-Resources\/Wildlife-Guide\/Mammals\/North-American-River-Otter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">National Wildlife Federation<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Brown pelicans, meanwhile, <a href=\"https:\/\/californiacoastaltrail.org\/2002\/06\/the-california-brown-pelican\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">can grow up<\/a> to five feet in length, with a wingspan measuring anywhere from six-and-a-half feet to seven-and-a-half feet long,<\/p>\n<p>The first instance of a river otter eating a brown pelican was at the Rodeo Lagoon in 2006, about 50 miles from Abbotts Lagoon, according to the study. <\/p>\n<p>During one season at Abbotts Lagoon, Isadore and her co-author, Terrence Carroll, counted 73 pelican carcasses, according to the study. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her study, Isadore refers to river otters as &#8220;opportunistic predators whose diet varies seasonally according to availability&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-416855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}