an early morning walk in Singapore Botanic Gardens. Despite weighing over 200 pounds, he was trampled and bitten and could not stand up without help from a nearby rescuer. The man speculated that another runner might have stepped on one of the animals earlier, and wished that there could be more lighting installed at that location. Religion and mythology Norse mythology tells of the dwarf Ótr habitually taking the form of an otter. The myth of "Otter's Ransom" is the starting point of the Volsunga saga. In Irish mythology, the character Lí Ban was turned from a woman into a mermaid, half human and half salmon, and given three hundred years of life to roam the oceans. Her lapdog assumed the form of an otter and shared her prolonged lifetime and her extensive wanderings. In some Native American cultures, otters are considered totem animals. The otter is held to be a clean animal belonging to Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrian belief, and taboo to kill. In popular Korean mythology, it is told that people who see an otter (soodal) will attract 'rain clouds' for the rest of their lives. In the Buddhist Jataka tales, The Otters and The Wolf, two otters agreed to let a wolf settle their dispute in dividing their caught fish but it was taken away by the cunning wolf. Japanese folklore In Japanese, otters are called "kawauso" (). In Japanese folklore, they fool humans in the same way as foxes (kitsune) and tanuki. In the Noto region, Ishikawa Prefecture, there are stories where they shapeshift into beautiful women or children wearing checker-patterned clothing. If a human attempts to speak to one, they will answer "oraya" and then answer "araya," and if anybody asks them anything, they say cryptic things like "kawai." There are darker stories, such as one from Kaga Province (now Ishikawa Prefecture) in which an otter that lives in the castle's moat shapeshifts into a woman, invites males, and then kills and eats them. In the kaidan, essays, and legends of the Edo period like the "Urami Kanawa" (), "Taihei Hyaku Monogatari" (), and the "Shifu Goroku" (), there are tales about strange occurrences like otters that shapeshift into beautiful women and kill men. In the town of Numatachi, Asa District, Hiroshima Prefecture (now Hiroshima), they are called "tomo no kawauso" () and "ato no kawauso" (). It is said that they shapeshift into bōzu