After years of delighted visitors, the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo’s family of seven Asian small-clawed otters is headed to a new home. On Wednesday, they’ll embark on a 700-mile journey to the Memphis Zoo.
Over the weekend, Gainesville community members gathered at the zoo to say their goodbyes to the close-knit critters, watching them wrestle in their enclosure’s pool, zip down a makeshift water slide and nuzzle against each other under the sun. Parents lifted children out of their strollers for a better view as the otters showcased their skills — pressing buttons to communicate with their trainers.
Each button is hung on a painted wood block behind the enclosure’s mesh border and represents a different need or desire, like food preferences or training requests. The buttons include: “yes,” “all done,” “settle” and “want.”
“When you have a very social animal, a lot of intellect goes into that because they have complex communication,” said Jade Woodling, a conservation education curator at the zoo.
The move comes as the zoo prepares to update its aging otter habitat. Meanwhile, the Memphis Zoo was seeking a larger otter group, making the transition a “serendipitous” decision, Woodling said.
The otters’ journey will be carefully coordinated, with Santa Fe staff meeting Memphis zookeepers halfway to ensure a smooth handoff. Memphis trainers, new to the button communication system, have already been introduced to words like “keeper,” “otter” and “new” to ease the transition.
Santa Fe keepers have also been playing sounds of gibbons in the otter’s enclosure to prepare them for their new neighbors at Memphis Zoo, according to Lorna Collins, a senior keeper at the zoo.
“It’s going to be a great way for them to communicate with their new trainers,” Collins said, adding that any move is going to be stressful for an animal, and Santa Fe’s goal is to make the transition as soon as possible.
Duncan and Chitra are the parents of the family, and moved to Gainesville in 2019 from Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the Santa Barbara Zoo, respectively. They do everything together, according to Collins, including raising their five pups — Kairi, Asami, Buddy, Nutmeg and Noelle — born in 2020 and 2023.
The whole family is “a lively bunch,” Collins said. “It's going to be very very hard walking through here and not seeing them everyday.”
Each otter has its own distinct personality. Kairi, known for her quiet and focused nature, will sit for hours to receive scratches and hold hands — unless she’s in a bad mood, according to her trainer Marianna Zechman.
“She’s very strong, and if you upset her she will come after you,” said trainer Marianna Zechman.
Nutmeg, who is just over a year old, remains focused even when chaos erupts around her, according to her trainer Courtney Luckow.
Both Zechman and Luckow said they'll miss watching the otters tussle with each other.
“I’ll miss the relationship,” Zechman said. “As trainers, we gain a very different relationship than as keepers.”
Jasmine Reister, a 2008 graduate of the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo program, visited the otters one last time on March 2 with her 3-year-old daughter, Aurora.
Aurora loves to watch the otters, and finds it funny when they play together. Reister also said the zoo has changed a lot since she graduated, and that the move to Memphis is a great opportunity to improve the enclosure.
“It’s been the same forever,” she said.
Jonathan Miot, the zoo director, said the next steps are to design and fundraise for a new otter habitat, but whether Duncan, Chitra and the pups will return is for a “future discussion.”
“That one’s up in the air,” he said.
Contact Shaine Davison at sdavison@alligator.org. Follow her on X @shainedavison.
Shaine Davison is a second-year journalism major and the university graduate school and Santa Fe reporter. Outside of classes, she enjoys spending time with friends and studying at coffee shops.
