Research Article |
Corresponding author: Lauren A. Harrington ( lauren.harrington@zoo.ox.ac.uk ) Academic editor: Enrico Di Minin
© 2019 Lauren A. Harrington, David W. Macdonald, Neil D’Cruze.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Harrington LA, Macdonald DW, D’Cruze N (2019) Popularity of pet otters on YouTube: evidence of an emerging trade threat. Nature Conservation 36: 17-45. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.36.33842
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In response to growing reports of otters in the pet trade, and suggestions that the popularity of pet otters on social media may be driving demand, we collated YouTube videos of pet otters to test for trends in the number of videos published, their exposure (number of views) and popularity. We used English-language search terms to provide a global overview, as well as local language search terms for four South East Asian countries identified as being of potential importance in the pet otter trade (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam), and Japan. We found that not only had the number of videos depicting pet otters increased in the last two to three years (2016–2018), but that their popularity and/or engagement had also increased. Notwithstanding some country-level differences in the details of effects observed, the greatest increases in both the number of videos produced and their popularity occurred in Indonesia and Japan. At a global-level, commercial “viral” video sites appeared to be influential in terms of posting highly popular pet otter videos. At a national level, potentially influential videos tended to be produced by four or five individual otter owners. The appearance of phrases such as “I want one” in the comments section of the English-language videos, although not necessarily a statement of actual intent, suggests that these videos may be driving demand amongst their viewers and followers; similar analyses of video comments in each local language are warranted. Our results show an increase in social media activity that may not only be driving the apparent increase in popularity, but also amplifying awareness of the availability of these animals as pets, as well as creating and perpetuating the (erroneous) perception of otters as a suitable companion animal. At a global level, there are welfare concerns associated with otters in the pet trade, and, in South East Asia specifically, there are serious conservation concerns. We recommend increased regulation of these activities on social media, increased public awareness of the negative impacts of the pet trade on otters, and increased international protection. Specifically, we suggest the need to uplist both small-clawed and smooth-coated otters (Aonyx cinereus and Lutrogale perspicillata, respectively) to CITES Appendix
animal welfare, Aonyx cinereus, conservation, Lutrogale perspicillata, social media, wildlife trade
People have been domesticating wild animals (
Pets (cats and dogs) are hugely popular on social media (
Otters (Mustelidae, subfamily Lutrinae) have long been a popular species amongst the general public, particularly in the western world (for example, as illustrated by popular novels and media productions such as “Tarka the Otter” [
Otters have extensive home ranges in the wild, extending over tens of kilometres (depending on species), and spend a proportion of their time in water (
There is some evidence that trade in live otters in SE Asia is increasing: for example, seizures in Japan increased from two in 2007 to 32 in 2017 (
1) Has the number of videos portraying otters as pets increased?
2) Has the exposure (“reach”), popularity of, and engagement with, these videos increased?
3) Who is posting the most popular (and potentially influential) videos?
4) Does the response to videos (as illustrated by viewer comments) suggest that viewers want their own otter as a pet?
Our aim was to provide evidence for the potential role of social media as a driver of the otter pet trade, and, more broadly, to demonstrate how social media data may be used to provide insights into social interests and trends, pointing to potential emerging markets.
YouTube videos portraying pet otters were initially collated using the search term “pet otter”, and manually screening all hits for relevance (filtered by view count first and then by upload date to ensure that no recent videos with low view counts were missed). Inclusion criteria were videos showing otters in contact with humans, being touched or picked up, in buildings or other artificial surroundings, such as swimming pools or gardens, or otters restrained in any way, for example, in cages, or on leads. Videos showing otters in rehabilitation centres or zoos, people playing or interacting with (but not touching) wild otters, people swimming with captive otters through established organisations (e.g. centres that offer interactions with nature to terminally ill children), video compilations, clips from films, animations, or educational videos advising against keeping otters as pets, were excluded. Selected screened videos were saved as a playlist in YouTube. For SE Asian countries we used the following local language search terms: “berang-berang” in Indonesian, “memerang” in Malay, “con rái cá” in Vietnamese, and “นาก” in Thai (translations of the word otter), and for Japan “ペットのカワウソ” (translation of pet otter). Preliminary searches of Japanese videos using the translation of the word “otter” alone identified a large number of irrelevant videos that did not conform to our inclusion criteria (which was not the case for searches for other countries); therefore, we adopted a more restrictive search term for Japanese videos. The difference will have affected only the number of videos screened, not the number of videos selected for analysis. We included reposted videos (even if the original was also selected) because we were interested in the number of videos available to potential viewers rather than the number of unique videos per se. For the same reason, all videos from YouTube channels showing frequent updated videos of the same otter were also included but only if they came up in the original search. Selected videos under each language search term were saved as separate playlists. All videos were retrieved in November 2018.
All statistical analyses were carried out in R (version 3.5.1,
For each playlist, we also identified a subset of potential “influencer” videos, defined as those that were both popular (liked; > median like:view ratios) and reached a large number of people (views; > median views). To assess who was posting these potentially influential videos, we manually checked the description of the video, and of the YouTube channel posting the video (including the profile details) and recorded the channel, the type of video (i.e. an original video posted by the owner of the otter, or a reposted video posted by, for example, a “viral” video clips channel), the number of channel subscribers, and the location of the channel (where available). In accordance with ethical research practices (see e.g.
To test for trends over time (in exposure, popularity, engagement and relative dislikes) we considered successive publications of videos by upload date as a time series (with frequency equal to the average number of posts per year), and used the tslm function in the “forecast” package (
Finally, we selected all (English-language) (“pet otter”) influencer videos that had a minimum of 1,000 comments, to explore the content of comments and thus to assess the extent to which viewers expressed a desire to own a pet otter themselves. For each of the videos selected, we extracted the full text of all comments (also using the tuber package) and exported the text for each video to a text file for further analysis. Comment text was cleaned prior to analysis by removing symbols, numbers and common English stopwords, and transforming the text to lower case. Additional stopwords and frequent words that had little meaning out of context or that added little to the understanding of the text were identified as part of an iterative process and also removed: this resulted in the removal of the stopwords “actually”, “aren’t”, “can”, “didn’t”, “doesn’t”, “don’t”, “isn’t”, “I’ve”, “just”, “know”, “probably”, “really”, “shouldn’t”, “that’s”, “think”, “que”, words used as search terms (“otter/s” and “pet/s”) and those appearing in the title of the video, as well as profanities, slang acronyms (e.g. fef), and words related to YouTube (“amp”, “com”, “href”, “http/s”, “quot”, “video”, “watch”, “www, “youtube”). Within the cleaned comment text, we identified the ten most frequently appearing words as an indicator of comment content and a reflection of the sentiments of commenters. Where “want” (or other similar words identified post hoc) appeared in the most frequent words, we identified significant word associations (i.e. those words that most often occurred alongside “want”), and verified the context within which the word was originally expressed by searching manually through the text for each occurrence of the term, recording the number of times that the word appeared in a phrase suggesting desire by the commenter to have their own pet otter (e.g. “I want one”, as in
We identified a total of 64 videos on pet otters using (English-language) search terms, and 173, 35, 115, 58, and 338 for Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese videos, respectively. English-language pet otter videos were first published in 2009 (although the next English-language video was not published until August 2011), SE Asian videos were first published in 2010 or 2011 (depending on country), and Japanese videos in 2012; for all language videos, annual numbers were relatively low before 2016 but (with the exception of those in Thailand) increased thereafter at an annual rate of 1.1–4.3, most notably in Indonesia (where the number of videos doubled each year between 2016 and 2018) and Japan (where it quadrupled), reaching peaks of at least 83 and 215, respectively, in 2018 (Fig.
Number of pet otter videos (including reposted videos) published per year for a English language b Indonesian c Malaysian d Thai e Vietnamese and f Japanese search terms. Note that some videos appeared under more than one search term (e.g. many of the Japanese videos appeared under both English and Japanese translations of “pet otter”), and that the numbers published in 2018 are an underestimate since they did not include videos published in December of that year.
We did not formally categorise videos based on content but most could be described broadly as showing an otter: being “petted” (touched but not held) by a person or group of people, eating, swimming (indoors in a bath or outdoors in a small plastic pool), interacting with other pets, walking or playing outside (sometimes restrained on a lead), or doing something considered to be amusing (Fig.
Screenshots of YouTube videos portraying pet otters, under the search terms “pet otter”, “berang-berang” (otter in Indonesian) and “ペットのカワウソ” (pet otter in Japanese). Downloaded from www.youtube.com (individual videos anonymised to protect the identity of users).
Detailed analyses of SE Asian videos focused on Indonesian and Thai videos as these comprised the largest sample sizes and represented both increasing and decreasing numbers of videos; these were compared with those in English and Japanese languages.
For all four sets of videos, indices of exposure, popularity and engagement were strongly left-skewed, with the vast majority of videos scoring relatively low on all three measures (see Appendix
In contrast with exposure rates, popularity and engagement indices for English-language pet otter videos were relatively low in comparison with benchmark levels (see Methods). Most (84.1%, n=53) like:view ratios (popularity) were <0.02 (two likes per 100 views). The maximum like:view ratio recorded (0.5) was based on very small sample size (1 like, 2 views) and considered to be unrepresentative, only two (3.2%) other videos had like:view ratios ≥0.04. Most of the local language otter videos also had like:view ratios <0.02 (Indonesian: 82.1%, n=142; Thai: 89.6%, n=103; Japanese: 76.3%, n=238) and the proportion of videos scoring 0.04 or more was relatively low (11.2, 4.8 and 5.4%, respectively, for Indonesian, Thai and Japanese videos). However, there was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of “popular” videos among countries(chi-squared test χ2 = 8.81, df=3, simulated p value = 0.025) and a slight (non-statistically significant) tendency for more Indonesian videos to score highly on popularity indices than other pet otter videos (pairwise comparisons: English-language vs. Indonesian, p=0.072, Indonesian vs. Thai, p=0.050, and Indonesian vs. Japanese, p=0.029, critical value with Bonferroni correction for 6 tests = 0.008), although popularity overall was significantly lower for Indonesian (median likes:views = 0.003 i.e. 3 likes per 1,000 views) and Thai videos (0.004) than for either Japanese (0.007) or English-language (0.009) videos (pairwise Wilcox tests, adjusted p<0.01) and lower for Indonesian videos than Thai videos (pairwise Wilcox test, adjusted p=0.009). There was no statistical difference between the popularity of English-language and Japanese videos (pairwise Wilcox test, p=0.259; overall difference among countries: Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 29.1, df = 3, p<0.001). Similarly, most (74.6%, n=47) English-language videos, and most local language videos (Indonesian videos 72.8%, n=126; Thai videos 73.9%, n=85; Japanese videos 65.0%, n=202) received less than one comment per thousand views (engagement). No English-language video received 5 comments or more per 1,000 views (comment:view = 0.005), but 10.4% (n=18) of Indonesian videos, 7.7% (n=24) of Japanese videos and 3.5% (n=4) of Thai videos did (albeit, for Indonesian videos, based on <1,000 views). On average, engagement (comments:views) was significantly lower for Indonesian videos (median = 0) than for all others (medians = 0.0004 for Thai and Japanese videos, and 0.0005 for English-language videos; Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 22.0, df = 3, p<0.001, pairwise Wilcox tests: Indonesian videos vs. Japanese p<0.001, Indonesian vs. English-language videos p=0.017 and Indonesian vs. Thai videos p=0.002, all others p > 0.05) but the likelihood of a video receiving high engagement scores differed among countries (chi-squared test χ2 = 10.49, df=3, simulated p value = 0.019) being significantly higher for Indonesian videos than for English-language videos (pairwise comparison, p=0.008; critical value with Bonferroni correction for 6 tests = 0.008).
Only one each of the English-language, Thai or Japanese videos exceeded the benchmark value of 40% dislikes, whereas 16 (11.7%) of Indonesian videos exceeded the benchmark (chi-squared test χ2 = 37.5, df=3, simulated p value < 0.001). In all cases, median percentage dislikes were less than 3%.
Amongst the English-language pet otter videos, we identified 19 influencer videos (those with > median views and > median like:view ratios). Three were original videos published by two otter owners (in 2017 and 2018), both from Japan. A fourth also appeared to be an original post by an otter owner (in 2014), from an unknown location. Most influencer videos (n=14) appeared to be reposted videos; six of these were posted by three different commercial US-based YouTube channels that buy and sell, or licence, video clips, and one by a Philippine YouTube channel posting trending video clips. One of the US channels reposted three videos from an original Instagram account of an otter owner in Bangkok, Thailand; another reposted the same video of one of the Japanese otters twice in two successive years. Other videos were posted on various animal channels from unknown locations. The five (most viewed) pet otter videos with over a million views comprised two original videos posted by one of the Japanese otter owners (with 147,000 subscribers), and three reposted videos posted on one of the US-based commercial YouTube channels (with >300,000 subscribers), a personal YouTube channel (with a single playlist of funny videos and 0 subscribers) and a dedicated cat channel (with 4,800 subscribers), the latter two both from unknown locations.
Of 30 Indonesian influencer videos, at least six appeared to be original videos by four different Indonesian otter owners, two were selling otters, at least three appeared to be local online TV channels featuring local people with pet otters, and one was an Indonesian educational channel. One of the Indonesian TV channels provided a link to the “Otter lover Indonesian Community” (or “musang lovers”, which means civets but also includes otters, and refers to a community group that keep civets and otters as pets and meet socially with their pets). Five Indonesian videos had more than 10,000 views – these included two YouTubers with their own pet otter (although neither was a dedicated otter channel, with 858 and 68,000 subscribers, respectively) and one seller (with 166 subscribers); the only Indonesian video with more than a million views portrayed an Indonesian actress with her pet otter, posted on an Indonesian celebrity channel (with 172,000 subscribers).
Thai influencer videos portrayed predominantly (20 of 29) original videos posted by three otter owners from Thailand on their own dedicated otter channels (16 of which, including one with over a million views, were posted on a single channel, with 13,000 subscribers); three videos were posted on local TV/news and entertainment channels. One other Thai video that received over a million views (but with a relatively low popularity score of 0.003) was posted on a local entertainment channel and differed from most other otter videos in portraying a large adult smooth-coated otter interacting with, and being handled by, its apparent owner (most other videos showed juvenile otters, and often very small pups that were not yet weaned).
We did not attempt to assess the source of all Japanese influencer videos (n=96) due to time constraints but the top 28 (those with > 100,000 views and > median like:view ratios) were posted exclusively by four different Japanese otter owners (two of which also appeared amongst the English-language influencer videos). Eight of these videos received over one million views, and above-median popularity scores.
Views per day of English-language pet otter videos peaked at 16,127 for a video published in December 2017 but declined in 2018 to levels comparable to those before 2017 (Fig.
Time series plots showing successive publications of pet otter videos under a English language (n=61, 2009-2018) b Indonesian (n=161, 2011–2018) c Thai (n=106, 2010–2018), and d Japanese (n=229, 2012–2018) search terms (see Fig.
Trend statistics for exposure, popularity and engagement indices for English-language (n=61), Indonesian (n=161), Thai (n=106) and Japanese pet otter videos (n=229), 2009–2018. In all cases, 2018 includes videos posted up until the end of October (videos published in November were excluded, see Methods). The trend is the average increase between successive video publications; F, df, and p values are based on ANOVA of the trend component of the time series. Statistically significant trends are shown in bold.
Videos | Index | Trend | F | df | P |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
pet otter | views per day (exposure) | 14.9 | 0.74 | 1, 59 | 0.394 |
(English) | likes:views (popularity) | 0.0002 | 6.31 | 1, 59 | 0.0151 |
comment:views (engagement) | 5.9e-06 | 0.51 | 1, 58 | 0.477 | |
% dislikes | -0.13 | 4.13 | 1, 56 | 0.0472 | |
berang berang | views per day (exposure) | -0.28 | 0.34 | 1, 159 | 0.560 |
(Indonesian) | likes:views (popularity) | 0.0002 | 28.04 | 1, 158 | <0.001 |
comment:views (engagement) | 5.04e-05 | 2.77 | 1, 158 | 0.098 | |
% dislikes | -0.068 | 2.63 | 1, 125 | 0.107 | |
นาก (Thai) | views per day (exposure) | 1.41 | 1.15 | 1, 104 | 0.285 |
likes:views (popularity) | 1.8e-05 | 0.67 | 1, 100 | 0.416 | |
comment:views (engagement) | 1.25e-05 | 7.93 | 1, 102 | 0.006 | |
% dislikes | -0.012 | 0.22 | 1, 101 | 0.640 | |
ペットのカワウソ | views per day (exposure) | 10.6 | 14.54 | 1, 227 | <0.001 |
(Japanese) | likes:views (popularity) | 0.0001 | 158.8 | 1, 227 | <0.001 |
comment:views (engagement) | 1.47e-06 | 83.5 | 1, 227 | <0.001 | |
% dislikes | -0.006 | 2.65 | 1, 222 | 0.105 |
Trends in Indonesian videos were broadly similar to those of English-language pet otter videos with no trend over successive postings for views per day (but a few outstanding videos posted between August 2017 and February 2018, Fig.
Five English-language pet otter videos were selected for further analysis of comments. In all cases, comments were characterised (based on the ten most frequently appearing words) by words such as “cute”, “like”, “love” and “adorable”, as well as words such as “want” and “get” (Table
Wordcloud depicting the nature of comments for one of the pet otter influencer videos (defined as the most viewed and the most popular videos; > median views, and > median like:view ratios) selected for comment content analysis (those with > 1,000 comments). The wordcloud shown here is for Video 2 (see Table
Most frequently cited words in potential influencer English-language pet otter videos. n is the number of comment lines analysed; freq is the number of times the word occurred in the entire document and was not necessarily the same as the number of comments that the word occurred in. Specific words mentioned in the text are highlighted.
Video 1 (n=3,922) | Video 2 (n=3,254) | Video 3 (n=1,114) | Video 4 (n=945) | Video 5 (n=1,366) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Word | freq | Word | freq | Word | freq | Word | freq | Word | freq |
cute | 491 | cute | 600 | cute | 126 | cute | 97 | cute | 146 |
one | 160 | wiggle | 408 | like | 114 | one | 54 | like | 123 |
want | 145 | want | 244 | cage | 113 | like | 53 | love | 70 |
omg | 139 | one | 238 | animal | 93 | water | 52 | one | 64 |
like | 131 | like | 204 | baby | 56 | want | 48 | animals | 56 |
dog | 124 | adorable | 140 | little | 51 | get | 33 | get | 55 |
animal | 102 | omg | 117 | one | 48 | people | 29 | water | 45 |
adorable | 95 | dog | 115 | wild | 48 | sea | 27 | adorable | 45 |
little | 86 | now | 109 | sad | 46 | animals | 27 | best | 43 |
cat | 86 | love | 101 | water | 44 | wild | 25 | good | 41 |
Our analysis revealed an increasing number of pet otter videos published under both English, SE Asian (with the exception of Thai), and Japanese, search terms that (for English-language, Indonesian and Japanese videos) were also increasingly popular, and (for Thai and Japanese videos) increasingly engaged with (i.e. more recently published videos were more popular, and more engaged with, than older videos). This increase in social media activity, and response, suggests growing interest in, and popularity of, pet otters, both globally and nationally in some countries in east and SE Asia. Increasing trends were most notable for Japanese pet otter videos (see Fig.
The short snap-shots of captive otters in domestic settings shown in all YouTube videos viewed created the appearance of an animal that behaves much like a domestic dog – and this was particularly the case in SE Asian and Japanese language videos, where otters were often shown walking unrestrained along the bank of a river accompanied by a person, or (in Japan) outside on a lead (leash), walking amongst crowds of people in a town or city. Almost all videos (regardless of original language or country of origin) portrayed a picture of an affectionate “easy to handle” animal in the house. The increasing numbers of these types of videos create the (erroneous) perception that otters are suitable animals to be kept as pets (see
We focused on four SE Asian countries and Japan to assess national-level interest in pet otters on social media because an apparent emerging interest in keeping pet otters (predominantly small-clawed otters, but occasionally also smooth-coated otters) had been highlighted in these countries (
Smooth-coated otters are protected in all SE Asian countries considered in this study (enforceable by a prison sentence of up to 4 years for possession and trade – depending on the country and specific national legislation); small clawed otters are similarly protected in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, but not in Indonesia (
There are reports of otter breeding facilities in Thailand and in Indonesia (
Amongst the global, English-language pet otter videos, most potentially influential videos (defined here as those that were both popular and reached large numbers of people) were reposted videos, several of which were posted by commercial US-based YouTube channels purporting to host viral or trending videos. As in
Across all local language videos, potentially influential videos tended to be posted by a very small number of individual otter owners, suggesting that whilst the source of influence might be a priori unpredictable, it is somewhat limited. Further, and in accordance with other studies of social media activity (e.g.
Apparent surges in the popularity of other exotic pets (clownfish [Amphiprion spp.], Fennec foxes [Vulpes zerda] and snowy owls [Bubo scandiacus]), have previously been attributed to demand driven by children’s films. In these cases, however, scientific studies have failed to find clear evidence of a causative link. For example, the “Nemo effect” (the suggested effect of the children’s film Finding Nemo on purchases of clownfish representing the main character of the film Nemo) was more likely linked to media hype referring to the scarcity of the species and the anthropogenic allee effect (
In Japan, where the increase in social media activity associated with pet otters was particularly great, the popularity of otters as pets, and the perception that they are easy to keep, is likely also perpetuated by otter cafés (
Whilst social media (through driving demand for, and facilitating online sales of, threatened wildlife species) poses a significant risk to conservation and animal welfare, it also offers opportunities as a wildlife protection tool (through the vast repository of data available, and the insight provided into people’s interests and activities,
For otters in SE Asia, there is an urgent need to identify where pet otters are being sourced from, via what route, and to clarify the (il)-legality of the situation. Further research is needed on the drivers for the current trend in keeping pet otters, and to assess the role of social media in driving demand (in SE Asia and Japan, as a priority, but also globally). We did not attempt to translate and analyse comments posted in response to the local language SE Asian videos, but such analyses would be useful to assess local level, culturally-influenced, responses, and may be warranted to predict local-level emerging trade risks, detect national differences, and identify geographical priorities. More broadly, the role of social media in driving demand for new products warrants attention. Does social media instigate and create desire for owning a particular product (whether a pet otter, other exotic pet species, or any other illegal or unethical wildlife product), or does it simply respond to an existing desire and further amplify it?
Beyond the use of social media to detect trends and identify potential trade threats, there is a need for targeted interventions by social media companies and users. The commitment by a coalition of technology, e-commerce and social media companies (including Facebook and Instagram), in 2018, to reduce the trade in wildlife products by 80% by 2020 (Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online;
The current proposal to move small-clawed and smooth-coated otters to CITES Appendix
We thank World Animal Protection for funding this study, and Christoph Fink and one anonymous reviewer for useful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Phrases containing the term one, interpreted as indicating some desire for obtaining a pet otter
I want one, where do I get one, how can I get one, I need one, wish I had one, how do I go about retrieving one, can I have one, why doesn’t everyone have an otter, how does one go about getting an otter in Japan, how do you own one of these guys, can you have one of those as a pet, I’m gonna get one, I’d get one [if I could].
Wordclouds depicting the nature of comments for four pet otter influencer videos (Videos 1, 3, 4, and 5 in Table