http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/science/river-otters-socialize-at-the-latrine.html 2016-09-20 10:13:25 A River Otter’s Hot Spot? The Latrine Male coastal river otters in Alaska have a complex social life that centers on a common latrine, where they pick up information about their colleagues. === River otters Other animals, like River otters, which are in the same family as sea otters but a different genus, not only pick up information from scat and urine and anal gland emissions, but have all sorts of social interactions around the bigger latrines. Adi Barocas, a doctoral student at the University of Wyoming, has been studying river otters as part of a project that the university has had going for about 25 years. It began shortly after the 1989 The project involves research on many aspects of otter life, including how they form social groups. Among coastal river otters, which are different from more inland populations, the males live and forage for fish in fluid groups of as few as four otters or as many as 18. Females are solitary, and males leave their groups during mating season to find females. When the males are together, however, they play and groom each other and, before they defecate, often do what Mr. Barocas describes as “the poop dance.” In videos taken by cameras set up near latrines, the male otters wave their back ends rhythmically, stepping from one hind foot to the other. Exactly what the poop dance means isn’t clear, Mr. Barocas said. But he and Merav Ben-David, his adviser, and other researchers, reported in the October issue of One thing made clear in the many hours of video: These otters give new meaning to the term “party pooper.”