I mentioned in yesterday’s post that my love and admiration for manatees stems from when I was a child, and I wasn’t lying. After writing yesterday’s post, I was inspired to see if I could locate a manatee stuffed animal I got when I was about ten from Epcot in Disney World. I can remember positively begging my parents for it, much to their dismay because the damn thing was probably ridiculously overpriced, but, being the wonderful parents they are, they succumbed to my pleas and purchased Mr. Manatee for me.
Believe it or not, I found him (yes, it’s a him), and he looks as good as he did all those years ago.
To pay homage to Mr. Manatee and all actual manatees out there, let’s continue our discussion of facts about them. Again, this information comes from thesmithsonianmag.com.
“6. Dugongs (Dugong dugon), in the same order (Sirenia) as manatees, spend all of their time in coastal ocean waters of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific and they don’t ever venture into freshwater. Although they look similar to manatees, dugongs have a more whale-like fluke compared to the round, paddle-like tail that you see on manatees.
“7. The closest living relatives of sirenians are elephants. Manatees evolved from the same land animals as elephants over 50 million years ago and the fossil record shows a much more diverse group of sirenians than we have today, with dugongs and manatees living together throughout their range.
“8. Humans have one round of baby teeth and then if we lose or hurt an adult tooth, a trip to the dentist is in order. Manatees, like their elephant relatives, continuously replace their teeth throughout their lives with the older teeth at the front falling out and new teeth growing in at the back of their mouth.
“9. Researchers believe that the now-extinct Steller’s sea cow (the largest member of the order Sirenia) was at one point found throughout the Pacific, in waters off Japan and the U.S. west coast. In 1741, Georg Wilhelm Steller first described the sea cow from islands off the coast of Russia (in what would later be called the Bering Sea) as subsisting off of kelp and not being able to submerge underwater. Within 27 years of first being described, the species was driven to extinction by hunting and competition for their kelp food source with an exploding urchin population,” the web page states.
Let’s hear it for the manatees.
Photo by Maegan Luckiesh on Unsplash
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