Rare otter pups go for first swim amid heatwave in England

Three rare giant otter pups have been cooling off in the heatwave currently being experienced in England by having their first “swimming lesson”.

The cute triplets were born just 15 weeks ago to first-time parents Bonita and Manu at Chester Zoo in Cheshire in the north-west of the country.

They were tucked away in their den for the first few weeks of their lives but have now been introduced to life in the water.

Frazer Walsh, keeper on the zoo’s carnivore team, said even otters have to learn the basics when they are young.

Led by their mum, they were picked up by the scruff of their necks and popped straight in at the “deep end”.

“It looks a little dramatic, but it's exactly what they'd do in the wild,” he said.

Giant otters are the world's largest species of otter and one of the apex predators in the Amazon’s river systems.

But they face an uncertain future in the wild with conservationists estimating only 2,000 to 5,000 of them still remain across South America.

Their decline has largely been driven by deforestation, water pollution and illegal hunting and they are listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

This means the species faces a very high risk of extinction without urgent conservation action.

The birth of Uca, Yali, and Yara are part of the international conservation breeding programme in European zoos that’s working to safeguard them from extinction.