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The four Asian small-​clawed otters share their enclo­sure with the Indian rhino. This for­mi­da­ble beast most likely will not attract the otters’ curios­ity, so this should be sat­is­fied in another way. Asian small-​clawed otters search for mus­sels, snails and small fish in streams and shal­low waters. Unfor­tu­nately, it is not pos­si­ble to dis­trib­ute these kinds of treats across the waters of the exhibit as they would attract crows, herons and rats. And there are many of those around, so the food would be gone before the otters would get to it. There­fore the zookeep­ers clev­erly designed a kind of mobile made of buck­ets with holes in it. A bucket with food will lower when the ice in the bucket on the other side melts. The otters reg­u­larly check whether the buck­ets are low enough yet. It is only then that they can claw the mus­sels out of the holes with their hands. The mobiles are placed at var­i­ous points across the com­pound, so that these lit­tle crit­ters can always find a chal­lenge and be on the look­out for food all day long.

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