Singapore's Urban Wildlife: Otters, Nature, and City Life

Singapore's vibrant wildlife, including playful otters, showcases a unique harmony between urban life and nature.

### The Enchantment of Singapore's Wildlife: A Personal Journey
* 🌆 When I first arrived in Singapore, I was captivated by the city's **clean and vibrant atmosphere**, characterized by **towering skyscrapers** and **lush tropical rainforests** filled with **diverse wildlife**.
* 🐍 During my initial week, I witnessed extraordinary events, including a **dramatic encounter between a king cobra and a reticulated python**, and I marveled at the sight of a **pangolin casually walking down the stairs** on campus.
* 🐦 A wild parakeet even landed on my shoulder while I was considering a flat to rent, reinforcing my impression that "**everything about Singapore was just incredible**."
* The otter population, particularly the Bishan family, became a focal point of interest as they made a **remarkable comeback after being absent for decades** due to pollution in Singapore's waterways.
* 🌊 Thanks to successful clean-up initiatives, the waterways transformed from **polluted environments** into **thriving habitats for fish**, attracting otters back to the region, with **around 12 families now residing** in Singapore.
* 📸 Dedicated otter watchers play a crucial role in observing these animals, fostering **connections to nature** that can lead to **greater environmental awareness and appreciation** among the public.
* 🌳 Singapore's commitment to enhancing its green spaces, including **planting over a million trees** and ensuring parks are within a **10-minute reach**, reflects a broader vision of **coexistence between urban life and wildlife**.
* 🦁 Ultimately, Singapore embodies a unique blend of **urban development and rich biodiversity**, challenging the idea of cities as mere **concrete jungles** and instead presenting them as potential **wildlife refuges**.

When I first uh moved to Singapore, I thought it was magical. Here's this clean, bright, pretty, well-run city with twisted tall skyscrapers made of steel and glass that's rising out of what's left of a tropical rainforest. And it wasn't just tropical rainforests; it was animals walking around. And you see sunbirds flitting amongst the flowers. You see hornbills hopping from branch to branch on campus. You see kugos and Sumatran flying dragons and paradise tree snakes gliding from tree to tree. All of this was just so amazing to me. The first week I came to Singapore, there was a fight during the day out in the open between a king cobra and a reticulated python on the campus of NTU. That same first week, uh, there was video of, I'm trying to think which way I'm looking, there is video of a pangolin walking down the stairway between Yen us and rc4. I started to uh look for a place to

live and I went to a flat that I wanted to rent. I walked out on the balcony, and a parakeet flew, a wild parakeet flew, and landed on my shoulder. The property manager asked me, Are you going to take the flat? and I said, Of course I am. A little bird told me to. You know, this was just amazing to me. Everything about Singapore was just incredible to me. When I first moved here, I kept wondering to myself, You know, what is this place with these tall, twisted skyscrapers? And at the same time, we have brightly colored birds flying, hornbills that are eyeing people on campus, gliding lizards, and kugos and snakes. It was just amazing to me. To me, it was utterly fantastical, and everything everywhere was otter. So, the otter started to blow up on social media just before I came to Singapore in 2015, and one family in particular started to get a lot of attention, the Bishan family, because it lived downtown near all the famous landmarks of

Singapore, and so they were getting a lot of attention, and this was really exciting to me. Um, and this is a video from 2016. These are phone videos for the most part. Uh, but this is the Bishan mom, and these are her second brood of pups. Now, we never get this close to Otter anymore, so I deserve some scolding. Those are some Y and US students and an otter watch, and if you look upstream, you'll see the Bishan dad with a fish, and those whining noises, those are begging calls from the pups. Now, there's a little bit of something that's not actually in my script. You can see that the otters are sprinting. They have a communal latrine site, and I didn't know this 'cause I just started. Um, and so, so I was actually sitting in their latrine. These uh, otters that are swimming up river here, these are the prior year's broods, uh, brood rather. So, these are three yearling otters. They're sexually mature otters.

and they stay with the family. All of this was just incredible to me. Um, and part of the reason it was incredible and to everybody is that the otter were returning after a long absence. So, um, we know that there were otter in Singapore in sometime before the mid-20th century, and we know partly because of individual accounts, but partly because of things like this. This is haa Villa, and these are statues of otter in haa Villa. But this installation was moved in 1937. So, before 1937, we know that otter weren't just present in Singapore, but they were prominent in Singapore and prominent enough that their statues were put with Chinese Legends. But then Singapore started to change, it modernized, it started to industrialize, and all of a sudden, the waterways got filthy. What happened was they started to fill with sludge, industrial pollution, and dead animals to the point where they stank. And otter live in water, they eat fish in water, and they couldn't eat and live in waterways that were that dirty.

So, they left, but things changed again. Singapore enacted policies to clean up their waterways, and they were really, really successful. So, all of a sudden, instead of having waterways that were filled with filth, we had waterways that were filled with fish. And from the otter's point of view, they were feeding troughs. So, they came back, and now we have lots of otters all over Singapore. We have about 12 families. These are smooth-coated otters. They're a pretty large otter. The adults get up to about 10 kg, which is larger than the European common otter. They're a little bit unusual as mammals go because the adult offspring stay with the family as helpers. So, a family group might have two dominant breed individuals and one or two sets of adult offspring that are staying as helpers, and then a brood of pups, which is pretty typical. The family sizes are quite large in Singapore. We have families that are over 20 individuals, and we have more than a dozen families.

in Singapore, and those families are watched by otter watchers, some of whom go out and watch the otter every day. My students worked closely with some of the otter watchers, and we got to find out all sorts of interesting things. So, these are otters playing. Otters have a really tough life. They wake up in the morning, they fish, they roll around in the grass, they play, they go to sleep, and then a few hours later, they do it again. So, my students wanted to know whether adults and pups played differently and what they did to look at this. They found literally dozens of interactions like this and looked at the frequencies of roll switching among the individuals who are playing. So, the pups here, if you watch them long enough, they do something where one pup will chase the other, and then it'll switch roles, so the second pup chases the first. It's very much like tag, you're it. It turns out that pups do this a lot, and adults don't do this much at all. If an adult is in a

dominant position. It stays in a dominant position, but this tells us something. It tells us something about how play has different functions for pups versus adults. For pups, play is a way that they're figuring things out and they're learning. But for adults, they're jockeying for a position in the social group, and that's why they don't give up their position of dominance. I don't know if you noticed this. It was early in the video, but there's a monitor lizard that's watching the otter play. And it turns out this is pretty common. Monitor lizards and otters live in the same environments. They both eat fish, and they bump into each other all the time. And otters sometimes attack the monitor lizards, and sometimes they kill the monitor lizards, but not all the time. So my students wanted to know when the otter attacks, what conditions lead to the otter attacking times but not other times. This is a pair of otters that are approaching a monitor lizard, and if

you notice the monitor lizard's frill is open. Its throat frill is open. It's in an aggressive posture right here. And in fact, just seconds after this picture was taken, the monitor lizard whipped its tail at the otter. So, monitor lizards can also be aggressive, but most of the time, including here, they're reacting to the otter. What my students found after looking at dozens of these kinds of interactions was that otters were more likely to be aggressive if there were pups around, and they were most likely to be aggressive if there were more pups in a group than there were adults. So, the otters are only aggressive to defend the pups. The otters are big, and they're fast, and they're smart, and they don't really have to worry about the monitor lizards very much, but the pups do because they're small and they're kind of dumb. It turns out that pups drive a lot of the things that otters do. So, watch what's going on here. Do you see how they're swimming in a

line by the way we never get this close to otters anymore. And if I scold my students if I see this and I get scolded if I'm this close. We try and give uh OTS a pretty wide birth. What they're doing here is catching fish but what's interesting is they're catching really small fish. Uh this is called hering or coring depending on the medium in which they're doing it. And uh it turns out that otters do this only when they have pups. And when they do it they typically catch very small fish. So this isn't a way for them to catch more fish and it isn't a way for them to catch larger fish. What it is is a way for them to teach their pups how to hunt. And it's not just that the pups are learning how to hunt by being with the adults. It's that the adults are actively changing their behavior so that they can teach the pups what to do. So all of these um discoveries and

There are a few more of them. We couldn't have done without the otter Watchers, and the otter Watchers are incredibly dedicated to watching otters. We really owe them a lot, and I really want to kind of voice that gratitude towards them. A lot of things motivate otter Watchers, so otter Watchers might be curious about the otters; they might like the otters, but a lot of the otter Watchers are photographers, and that's their primary hobby. For them, this is a chance to get really excellent photographs. The same thing in Singapore is true with birders. If you've ever gone birding in Singapore, it's a little bit surreal because rather than go out and look for people with big binoculars, you look for people with big cameras. But otter watching and bird watching are gateways. They're gateways for people to interact with nature. So, people who might start otter watching because they want to get photographs of cute pups.

might continue to do other things because they've formed a connection with nature. We see this all the time, that people care about nature when they form some connection to nature, whether that connection is to an otter or to a pair of hornbills on campus or to a bird that visits them on their balcony. We need these personal connections, and we see them all over the place, so that's one thing to emphasize. But I'm not the only one who's thinking about this. Singapore has a lot of policies that make these kinds of connections a lot easier. So, we talked about Singapore cleaning up its waterways in the '70s and '80s. They've done a lot of other things too, including planting over a million trees. There are over 300 parks and nature reserves. Singapore has a plan that no one should be more than 10 minutes away from some kind of park. Now, there are a lot of reasons to do this, and some of these are public health reasons, but one of the effects of this is that people

will have more chances to interact with nature, and they'll have more chances to care. So, I'm really excited about these possibilities, especially in Singapore, especially because Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Recently, n Parks changed its motto, and Parks had the motto that Singapore is a city in a garden, and they changed it to Singapore as a city in nature. And I think this is a real effort on Singapore's part to shift how they view their relationship to Nature. I think we're trying to get away from something where nature is over there on the other side of a fence or a wall or something like that. Nature is something that's around us and above us and beside us, and Singapore is acknowledging that, and that's true in lots of places, including in cities. So, I think this also raises other questions such as can cities be Wildlife refuges? Is the biodiversity we see in Singapore, is this the last hot Ember of the biodiversity that was here before, or is this something that we can protect and maybe Foster and

grow lots of cities have wildlife. It's not just Singapore. Most North American cities have wildlife like raccoons and coyotes, and some have bears and bobcats, but sometimes they're even more impressive things. For example, Los Angeles has mountain lions, and Mumbai has leopards, and there's still one jaguar kicking around Tucson. So, there are still these big cats, not just predators, but big cats that are in other cities. And Singapore, unlike some of those cities, is just incredibly, incredibly dense in terms of human population, and yet we're ripe with wildlife. So, I think it's a real question: can we make cities that are wildlife refuges? Can we make cities that foster some kind of productive relationship between wildlife and humans? Can we make cities where we exist in close proximity, side by side? I think we can. The founder of Singapore famously, or at least as legend has it, saw a large creature moving along, and he thought it was a lion, and so he named Singapore after it, Singapore Lion City, and much later

Singapore adopted its mascot of a myr lion, which is supposed to celebrate Singapore's history as a sea city and this legacy of it being a lion city. Obviously, there are no lions in Singapore outside of the zoo, and there never were. But we do have a ferocious predator that hunts in groups, fights giant lizards, protects and teaches its offspring, and that's frequent in the waterways around Singapore. Isn't that predator sort of half fish and half lion? Singapore is magic. [Applause]

The Otters of Singapore — and Other Unexpected Wildlife Thriving in Cities | Philip Johns | TED

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The Magic of Singapore: A Personal Experience

The narrator was captivated by Singapore's clean, vibrant cityscape and its unique blend of urban life and tropical wildlife.

They witnessed remarkable animal interactions, including a king cobra and reticulated python fighting, and a wild parakeet landing on their shoulder.

The Bishan family's otters gained significant attention on social media, with the narrator sharing their close encounters and observations of the otters' behavior.

Otters were once prominent in Singapore before the mid-20th century, but industrialization and pollution drove them away.

Successful cleanup policies led to the return of otters, and now there are about 12 families living in Singapore.

The smooth-coated otters have a unique social structure, with adult offspring staying as helpers, and their playful interactions reveal differences in play behavior between pups and adults.

The Role of Play and Pups in Otter Behavior

Otters maintain a dominant position during play, with pups using it to learn and adults jockeying for social status.

The interaction between otters and monitor lizards is common, with otters being more aggressive towards the lizards when there are more pups in the group.

The otters' behavior, including catching small fish, is influenced by the presence of pups, as they aim to teach them how to hunt.

The Importance of Otter Watchers and Nature Connections

Otter Watchers play a crucial role in observing and photographing otters, fostering a connection with nature.

This phenomenon is mirrored in Singapore with birders, as both activities serve as gateways for people to interact with the natural world.

Singapore's policies, such as cleaning up waterways and planting trees, aim to create more opportunities for people to connect with nature, shifting the city's perspective from nature being separate to being an integral part of urban life.

Wildlife in Urban Areas: A Surprising Presence

Many cities, including North American ones, have diverse wildlife, with notable examples like mountain lions in Los Angeles and leopards in Mumbai.

Singapore, despite its dense human population, also boasts a rich variety of wildlife.

The city's founder's legendary encounter with a large creature inspired its name, and Singapore's unique waterways are home to a ferocious predator that embodies both fish and lion traits.