Too Cute for Their Own Good: How Japan's Pet Cafes May Be Driving Illegal Otter Trade

Posing for selfies on the laps of excited visitors, the otters of Tokyo's animal cafes have learned to play their part in their online stardom.

- Patrick Greenfield

In thousands of social media videos, the aquatic mammals wriggle through the outstretched hands of adoring customers who reward their attention with food. They have become the main attraction of Japan's animal cafe craze, where visitors pay to sit and feed popular pets.

But the booming demand has raised major concerns among conservationists about links to organised crime. The Asian small-clawed otter, classified as vulnerable to extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, is the otter species of choice and has become a popular pet, even though its commercial trade was banned internationally in 2019.

A study published in the journal