Rosa, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s oldest sea otter and one of the aquarium’s social media stars, died Wednesday, the Monterey Bay Aquarium said in a statement.
The 24-year-old southern sea otter served as a surrogate mother for 15 otters, the most in the aquarium’s history. She lived longer than the life expectancy of wild species, which is typically 15 to 20 years, according to the aquarium’s Facebook post.
Rosa was known for her blond head and “her signature head-back swimming style,” the aquarium wrote.
“Rosa is one of our most playful sea otters, and even though she’s 24 years old, she can still be seen playing and wrestling with younger otters when she’s stirred up,” curator of mammals Melanie Ott ( Melanie Oerter said.
“During the exhibition, Rosa is usually found sleeping against a window with her chin pressed against her chest and her tail wagging back and forth,” she said.
According to a page about Rosa on the aquarium’s website, she first arrived “as a 5-pound, 4-week-old puppy in September 1999 after being stranded as an orphan” and released into the wild for several years. Year. She returned to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2002 after experts determined she was too accustomed to human life and unfit for life in the wild.
Over the past few weeks, Rosa’s health deteriorated and experts at the aquarium decided to euthanize her. “She passed away peacefully with her caregivers by her side,” the aquarium’s post said.
In the post, the aquarium called Rosa “a charismatic ambassador for endangered species” who “played a leading role in the story of the sea otter’s recovery from near extinction during the fur trade.”
