Science makes stupid: Otters might juggle because they’re getting excited for dinner.

The researchers observe that otters play dexterously with rocks that they bring to the surface. The researchers are mystified:

The team has been able to draw a clear connection between otter juggling and hunger, suggesting that the animals tend to perform their little trick when their stomachs start grumbling.
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The team suggests one possible explanation is that the otters play with rocks when they’re excited, or perhaps when they anticipate eating. For captive otters, anticipating feeding time may be enough to get them excited and in need of a distraction, hence the juggling. Still, they have no real way of proving that and thus the mystery deepens.

When I was a wee tot I knew, and everyone I knew knew, that otters use rocks as eating utensils. Otter dives to the bottom and fetches a clam and a rock. Otter then floats on his back with the rock on his chest, and bashes the clam open on the rock. My mother owns a brass-cast sculpture of an otter doing just that, which she picked up at a roadside attraction where wild otters were to be seen. Besides the evident exuberance of wild otter life, the rock-clam behavior was the thing most commented upon.

Middle-aged otters tend to juggle more than youngsters or older otters, so the researchers thought the juggling act might have something to do with building the skills they use for eating. Since otters like to feast on shellfish, it would have made sense that the animals that play with rocks more often were better at extracting their food. However, when the researchers tasked otters of varying ages with solving food-related puzzles, the otters that juggle more often weren’t any better at it than the rest.

Food-related puzzles like how to eat shellfish using a rock, which wild otters do all day, and you could have looked it up on wikipedia?

These fucking researchers don’t know which end of the fork.