The main food that the Aleuts hunted were the sea otters. The Aleuts used sea otters for food and for their pelts and fur. There once were millions of sea otters, but now there are only thousands of them because the Russians hunted almost all of the sea otters. The sea otter is the only marine mammal that doesn't have much fat like other mammals do, which protects the animal from the frigid ocean waters. Since the sea otters have a lack of fat, the sea otters must constantly clean its fur.

 

Sea otters eat mainly on mollusks and sea urchins. When they are eating the sea urchins they crush it with their large teeth. Sea otters also use rocks as tools to crack open shell fish while swimming on their backs.

 

The pelt of the sea otter is one of the most prized of all furs. The brown inner part of the fur is very soft, it is also very wooly like and overlaid by the coarser and longer gray-tipped hair of the outer fur.

 

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