The video shows mother Lulu resting with her three newborn otter babies at a zoo in Switzerland.

Female otter Lulu, who moved to Zurich Zoo in Switzerland from the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 2012, gave birth to three offspring on 5th July.

The zoo reported that the young ones will be spending the next few weeks with their mother, who has lived in the same enclosure with her partner Tom since 2018.

According to reports, Tom was born in the wild and was brought to the zoo to ensure a genetically varied increase of the otter population in European zoos.

Female otters usually deliver two to three offspring after a gestation period of 61 to 63 days. The pups are blind and about 18 inches long at birth.

The only start seeing when they are between four and five weeks old and only begin ingesting solid food about two to three weeks later.

The young become independent at the age of one year.

Additionally, fish account for 70 per cent of their diet, but otters can also feed on amphibians, crabs, mussels, birds, small mammals and insects. The otter is an opportunist that eats whatever is most common and easiest to hunt.

Otters are considered an endangered species and are protected in Switzerland.

Newborns are of great importance for the zoo and the EAZA Ex-situ Programme (EEP), formerly known as European Endangered Species Programme, as otters were considered extinct in the alpine country in the 1980s.

However, an increasing number of individuals who migrate through rivers in France and Austria have been spotted in Switzerland since 2009.

A mutual collaboration between Zurich Zoo and the Pro Lutra Foundation, located in the municipality of Pontresina, aims to secure and increase the otter population in Switzerland.

The foundation aims to ecologically upgrade otter habitats such as alluvial forests, as well as river and lake banks in order to positively influence the return of the species in the country.