Watch sea otter flaunt basketball skills at Oregon Zoo. ‘No NBA Finals tickets required’

Move over, Puppy Bowl. Make way, Triple Crown. A new animal is gaining fame for her athletic prowess in Oregon.

Juno the sea otter loves shooting hoops and even “dribbles,” officials with the Oregon Zoo said in a news release and on social media.

Video shows her dunking a basketball into a custom hoop on her habitat’s rock wall, quickly followed by a slow-motion replay.

“Juno loves to play basketball,” Nicole Nicassio-Hiskey, the zoo’s senior marine life keeper, said in the news release. “She gets so excited whenever we bring the ball out for her training sessions. And she’s good too!”

Zoo caregivers taught Juno to dunk as a form of exercise to keep her elbow joints nimble. She can also dribble the ball by swimming around the hoop with it, officials said.

She used to train in a separate pool, until staff recently installed a hoop in her public-facing habitat so she could show off her skills.

“Zoo guests lucky enough to catch one of her training sessions can see some exciting basketball action — no NBA Finals tickets required!” officials said in a June 9 video on Facebook.

“You think LeBron James could learn a bit from her?” someone asked in the comments.

“Nice shot! Great form!!” someone else said.

Juno has training sessions every day, during which she can dunk the small basketballs into her hoop if she feels like it. Afterward, she refuels with some of her favorite fresh seafood, officials said.

“Juno is part of a marine mammal basketball dynasty” at the zoo, officials said. “Years ago, Oregon Zoo Caregivers trained sea otter Eddie to dunk as a way of exercising the aging otter’s arthritic elbow joints. Eddie, nearly 21 years old when he died in 2018, was one of the oldest known sea otters in the world and earned worldwide fame for his dunking skills.”

Juno is 9 and relatively young for an otter, but her training helps prevent arthritis, officials said.

She has lived most of her life at the Oregon Zoo after she was orphaned with two others — Lincoln and Uni Sushi — off the California coast, officials said.

They first went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s rescue and care program where the goal was to rehabilitate them. But they couldn’t be paired with a surrogate mom, deeming them non-releasable by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, officials said.

Sea otters were once abundant on the Oregon coast but were hunted to extinction in the 1900s. The zoo is working to bring them back through a partnership with a tribal-initiated nonprofit leading the reintroduction effort, the Elakha Alliance.

Their restoration would help protect the state’s marine ecosystems, officials said.

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