OtterBox phone cases may stand up to a brutal array of punishments, but one annoyed otter at a zoo in North Dakota proved to be too powerful an adversary, destroying both the phone and case and provoking an unusual response from the company.
Though there is no video of the incident, it took place at the Red River zoo in Fargo, according to Digital Trends . After a visitor accidentally dropped their OtterBox encased iPhone into the otter enclosure, the device caught the attention of one of the residents, which took it upon itself to test the phone case in a vicious way. In the single photo of the event that was captured, the otter can be seen examining the phone, shortly before it ripped apart the case, sending both the OtterBox and iPhone into the water, repeatedly retrieving and damaging them.
OtterBox responds to horrorifying otter attack on its iPhone case http://t.co/EFHyjD7rKW pic.twitter.com/066hN06TUz
— Digital Trends (@DigitalTrends) May 8, 2015
After numerous media outlets reached out to OtterBox seeking comment on the head-to-head match-up between phone case and mammal, the company responded by releasing a video showing one of their cases being successfully “tested” by a group of otters . According to Yahoo News , a company spokeswoman noted that “while OtterBox previously offered an ‘otter-tested’ case, it proved not to be very popular due to limited human-otter interactions.”
Retribution? Local Otter Destroys OtterBox smartphone case https://t.co/hX93tSHBWm via @YahooTech pic.twitter.com/ljTg6aRYRh
— Paymark (@Paymark) May 9, 2015
In a tongue-in-cheek press release, OtterBox also noted that they take the threat of otter damage seriously.
“In light of recent otter attacks on OtterBox cases, our engineers are hard at work to create a truly ‘otter-proof’ case,” they noted.
Work on the revolutionary anti-otter case has been suspended, however, “pending ability to get otter in-house for testing.”
Turns out super-strong Otterbox iPhone cases don’t protect against actual otters: http://t.co/qK1P6sdXKA pic.twitter.com/HOKOL4Obhv
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) May 8, 2015
Earlier this year, an iconic otter named Olive fell victim to a great white shark in Monterrey Bay. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the otter gained notoriety when it was rescued from a Santa Cruz beach, covered in oil and near death. Rescuers were able to save and rehabilitate Olive, making her the first otter to be cleaned of oil with techniques which were new at the time. Following her rescue, the otter was returned to the wild, living another six years before her encounter with the shark.
Despite the otter’s thrashing of the OtterBox in Fargo, the phone cases are regularly ranked among the best on the market, making it all the more unfortunate that the company is not genuinely working on an actual otter-proof model.
[Photo by Oli Scarff / Getty Images]
