Tour Scotland wildlife camera travel video of Otters around the coast on visit to the Isle of Skye, Inner Hebrides. The otter, Lutra lutra, was lost from most of England and Wales between the 1950s and the 1970s because of pesticide pollution of waterways. But it survived in Scotland’s cleanest bodies of water in the north and west and the islands. Today, the species is flourishing across Scotland, and recovering well across the UK as waterways are cleaned up. The Scottish population is estimated to be around 8,000 otters. Otters are largely solitary, semi aquatic mammals that get most of their food from lochs, rivers or the sea. The Scottish population has an unusually high proportion of coastal dwelling individuals, which feed almost exclusively in the sea. Otters must keep their fur free of salt using freshwater for it to remain effective as insulation. In freshwater, otters feed: mainly on fish such as trout, salmon and eels; on spawning frogs and toads in Spring and occasionally on mammals and birds. The otter belongs to the same family as the badger, pine marten, stoat and weasel, and American mink.
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