Aquarium Apologises For Offensively Calling Otter 'Thicc'

A California aquarium has faced backlash after posting a comment on Twitter referring to one of the park's otters as 'thicc'.

Monterey Bay Aquarium‏ posted a picture of Abby - one of the 6 resident females that train orphaned otters in the necessary skills to survive back in the wild.

However, the aquarium was forced to apologise after their comments sparked controversy, with some saying using the term 'thicc' was 'racist'.

One person pointed out that 'thicc' was offensive because the word originated in African-American slang to describe a woman's body as a 'sexy curvy female'.

Others agreed with the comment, as one person tweeted: "Holy crap @MontereyAq, this is shamefully appropriative language. I'm pretty sure we can all have a fun time with #scicomm without digital blackface."

Twitter

This caused the aquarium to tweet out a response to their picture and comment of Abby.

In series of tweets they apologised for misunderstanding any connotations the use of the meme had as they often reference memes on the Twitter feed.

They said: "If our tweet alienated you, please know that we are deeply sorry, and that we offer our sincerest apologies. If you follow our feed, we often reference popular memes to talk about the ocean. In this case, the memes used had connotations we were unaware of until now."

Twitter

However, others sat on the side of the aquarium, defending the tweet and saying some people had 'overreacted' or were 'offended too easily'.

"@MontereyAq Don't apologize for this one bit. If we keep acting like this, we'll eventually live in a bubble wrapped world because people can't take a harmless joke from a wonderful aquarium doing an awesome job at staying relatable on social media," one said.

While another posted: "Don't apologize for this tweet. This is literally the most pure n cute tweet I've seen in ages. I love it so much and people are getting offended over n o t h i n g. They just want to be petty and start drama."

But there is one person at the centre of all this, Abby the otter. As there is no response from Abby, it's assumed that she hasn't been offended by the comment - though, I do hasten to add, otters can't use social media and she probably wouldn't really want to be called fat given the chance.

Topics: US News, Animals, Politics

Rachael Grealish

Rachael is a NCTJ qualified journalist from West Cumbria, with a passion for news, features and journalism. Outside of work Rachael loves plenty of coffee, running and reading.

@RachaelGrealish