Today's Google Doodle in Singapore is a family of otters — and good thing, because these guys are national icons

• Today's Google Doodle in Singapore celebrates the country's most famous animal celebrities.
• As adorable as they are, Singapore's otters are also known for their violent tendencies.
• This hasn't stopped them from being beloved social media icons.

Singapore's most celebrated critters, a family of otters, are basking in the spotlight of today's Google Doodle for the country.

And I, for one, think gang behavior and violent tendencies aside, they deserve to bask in the limelight. 

Otters were initially driven away from Singapore by pollution and deforestation, but they came back to the tiny city-state in 2014, the Washington Post reported.

Cue otter mania: These otters captured hearts globally as the stars of a 2016 documentary by Sir David Attenborough, which depicts a day in the life of an otter family as they swim in Singapore's rivers.

Today, around 170 otters live in Singapore, divided into seventeen families, Channel News Asia reported last year.

Though much-loved at home and abroad, Singapore's otters have a knack for causing havoc.

Some of their antics include beating up a man, raiding residents' fish ponds — eating "thousands of dollars" worth of Koi fish in the process — and attacking crocodiles.

These highly territorial otters even engage in gang fights with rival families, sagas of which fill the pages of local media reports.

TikTok user @sunshineyiling caught one of these fights on camera in June, in a video seen more than 450,000 times. The video depicts two rival gangs of otters engaging in vicious combat in a bush.

But for all their antics, Singapore still adores its otters.

In 2016, readers of The Straits Times voted them as national icons on Singapore's 51st birthday, beating out the Singaporean passport, "Singlish" — or Singaporean English — and the thumb drive.

And Singapore social media is rife with posts of residents' fascination with the country's "otter crossings" and packs of otters spilling out into the country's urban jungle.

Groups like Otterwatch and Ottercity have even popped up on Facebook to monitor the otters' comings and goings.

In a video posted in June and viewed over 9 million times, TikTok user @kaitlyntan_ captured these animals in their natural environment, playing and swimming in Singapore's parks. 

How could anyone resist creatures such as these? Apparently, not even Google could.

Google did not respond to Insider's request for comment on why they chose to depict the otters for the Google Doodle today, sent outside regular business hours.