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A California Aquarium Had To Issue An Apology After Fat-Shaming An Otter

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Otters are peculiar creatures, with their funny little faces, short little legs, and long, shimmying bodies. Most otters tend to keep their figures svelte from all the non-stop playing and swimming they enjoy. However, it would appear that one otter in particular living at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, did not get that memo.

See, Abby, as they call her, is on the rotund side for an otter. Earlier this week the aquarium made light of their otter’s girth in a funny tweet, calling her a “thicc girl,” “an absolute unit,” and “c h o n k,” among other things.

But because of the age of hypersensitivity we’re living in, some took umbrage with the vernacular as being appropriated from Black culture, and in a way that typically references African American women’s bodies. And that’s certainly a valid argument, but on the other hand it’s just a funny tweet about an otter so maybe calm down a little everyone.

At any rate, this is how we arrived at the point in 2018 that an aquarium had to apologize for an insensitive tweet about an otter’s weight.

“Hey everyone. It has come to our attention that some of the references in this tweet are problematic and insensitive,” Monterey Bay later followed up. “We’re posting here in the thread so that people who have engaged with this tweet will join us in our learning moment.”

The whole thing went even more viral when YouTuber and “professional shitposter” Count Dankula picked up on it. “Having to apologize for calling an otter fat is peak 2018,” he tweeted.

(For what it’s worth, Mr. Dankula, also known as Mark Meechan, is no stranger to controversy himself, after finding himself in hot water earlier this year for jokingly filming his girlfriend’s pug doing Nazi salutes.)

At any rate, others chimed in to defend the original tweet, or to also point out the 2018-ness of it:

https://twitter.com/JoParkerBear/status/1075583025226924048

https://twitter.com/thelandofhirsh/status/1075822367396356096

Incidentally, Abby is also a bit of a hero, and apparently one of six resident females that teach orphaned baby otters the necessary skills they need to survive back out in the wild — which may explain her physique.

So it’s not like she got that way by, say, munching on whole crocodiles, as her people are sometimes wont to do.