Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. From ROMP!: A Journey Through the Natural History of Otters and Why They Matter by Heide Island, PhD, to be published on 4/28/26 by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2026 © by Heide Island. From behind a stand of frozen lupine, Patches, Crest, and Slash emerge onto the wetland. Moonshine reflects off the newly fallen snow, illuminating the predawn hour with a supernatural brightness. The three female otters surf the snow, their forward momentum pulling them across the slick surface like kids on a Slip ’N Slide: lope-lope-slide, lope-lope-slide. They halt beside a corrugated metal culvert, side by side, until Patches lurches forward and leaps onto the bank of Admirals Lake. Her landing fractures the frozen lakeshore, stamping an otter-sized divot.…