Hairy-nosed Otter

The rarest of Asia's otters, and the trickiest of Borneo's three otter species to identify: its nose pad (rhinarium) is covered in short dark hair, versus the smooth-coated otter's bare, diamond-shaped nose and the small-clawed otter's fully bare nose — the single most reliable field mark. A whitish upper lip, chin and front throat, a long slender 'snaky' body and tail, and a flatter skull than the smooth-coated otter round out the identification.

Tied to lowland wetlands, mangroves and peat swamp forest. Confirmed recent Sabah records include Deramakot Forest Reserve (2008, 2016, 2018), the Lower Segama (2016) and Danum Valley (2019), alongside camera-trap records from Kalimantan. Endangered (IUCN), with a population thought to number only in the hundreds — a genuinely rare find anywhere in Sabah.