Welcome back to Otter Friday in which your hard-working and diligent Blogtown team go to extreme and sometimes awesome lengths to bring you essential news on the world's most talented and objectively brilliant semi-aquatic mammals.

This week, we swell with pride:

The race to determine the Oregon Zoo's 2013 Mother of the Year grew heated at times but was thoroughly engaging, as keepers rallied behind their favorite animals and voters participated in record numbers. In the end, Tilly the river otter came out ahead with 47 percent of the vote, outpacing Asian elephant Rose-Tu (38 percent) and DeBrazza's monkey Brooke (15 percent).

Whilst we don't mean to take ALL the credit for this, it's highly likely that our tireless coverage of Tilly's maternal brilliance played some part in getting her over the line. I mean, she beat an elephant and a monkey who, thanks to the lack of otter-related animated films in recent years (ever), should have been considered favorites.

In the hope that there will be a vote on the sporting ability of zoo animals some time soon, here is a video of Oregon Zoo's Eddie the Otter playing basketball. Seriously.