AssetID: 52829828
Headline: RAW VIDEO: Clam Dunk! Oregon Zoo's Sea Otter Becomes Basketball Star
Caption: Juno, a rescued sea otter at the Oregon Zoo, has become a basketball star who can dunk with the likes of LeBron James. Several years ago, zoo care staff trained the otter to put a ball through a plastic basketball hoop as a way of exercising her elbow joints. Until recently, her athletic exploits took place off-view, in a behind-the-scenes training pool. Now, thanks to an assist from the zoo maintenance team, Juno slams it home in a custom-made hoop mounted to the rock wall of her habitat. Zoo guests lucky enough to catch one of her training sessions can see some exciting basketball action. At nine years old, Juno’s still a relatively young sea otter, but moving her front limbs is a way of staving off stiffness and arthritis as she ages, according to zoo caregivers. Plus, she can’t get enough of the game. “Juno loves to play basketball,” said Nicole Nicassio-Hiskey, the zoo’s senior marine life keeper. “She gets so excited whenever we bring the ball out for her training sessions. And she’s good too!” Sea otters are known for their playfulness, which Nicassio-Hiskey thinks gives Juno an advantage on the court. During their daily training sessions, care staff bring two small basketballs along. If she chooses to, Juno can pick one up in her front paws and dunk it into her special basket. She also “dribbles” the ball by swimming around the hoop with it. She ends each session with some of her favorite fresh seafood. Juno is part of a marine mammal basketball dynasty. Years ago, Oregon Zoo caregivers trained sea otter Eddie to dunk as a way of exercising the aging otter’s arthritic elbow joints. Eddie, nearly 21 years old when he died in 2018, was one of the oldest known sea otters in the world and earned worldwide fame for his dunking skills. Juno and the two other sea otters at the Oregon Zoo — Lincoln and Uni Sushi — are rescue animals, orphaned off the coast of California as tiny pups and brought to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s rescue and care program for rehabilitation. Unable to be paired with a surrogate mom, they were deemed non-releasable by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sea otters, once abundant along the Oregon coast, were hunted to extinction here in the early 1900s and have not established permanent residence in the state for more than a century. The zoo is helping to bring sea otters back to Oregon through a partnership with the Elakha Alliance, a nonprofit that’s leading reintroduction efforts. Though currently protected from hunting by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, sea otters continue to be threatened by oil spills, fishing nets and infectious diseases.
Keywords: sea otter,otter,animals,zoo,nature,natural world,mammals,basketball,sport,photo,video,offbeat,fun
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