FLORIDA (WEST INDIAN) MANATEE
AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
OH HOW AWFUL DOCUMENT OF THE MANATEES ISAW TODAY 4.2.2013 SO MUCH OF THEM DIED AS 600 HUNDRED !
Manatees inhabit warm waters of the Western Atlantic from Florida to Brazil where they live in coastal waters, freshwater inlets, and river mouths.
Warm Florida waters have provided wintering refuges for manatees in natural warm water springs. They also are attracted to the warm water outflow from power plants, where on occasion a manatee has gotten stuck and rescue efforts have made the evening news.
Although their range is quite large, manatees today exist only in a few small, isolated populations. They once were widespread in rivers and along coasts in their range, but they were hunted extensively in the 18th and 19th centuries. Coastal development has further reduced their populations. Today, there are less than 2,000 manatees remaining in the United States.
The manatee is a large, bulky aquatic mammal with flippered forelimbs and a spatula-shaped tail. Manatees can grow to 12 feet in length and weigh up to 3500 pounds. They may live to be 50 years old.
The manatee diet consists entirely of vegetation, consuming at a rate of 100 pounds a day. They eat by using their divided upper lip, which is very flexible, to grasp and take in aquatic plants. Like other air-breathing marine mammals (dolphins, whales, and seals), manatees must periodically surface for air.
Females reach sexual maturity between five and nine years of age, but they do not produce many offspring; more animals are killed each year than are born. Mothers are strongly bonded to their calves, but other social ties among manatees are very loose. They are extremely gentle and have been described as incapable of aggression.
Manatees are one of four living species in the Order Sirenia, which also includes the West African manatee, the Amazonian manatee, and the dugong. Another sirenian, the Stellers sea cow, became extinct in the 1700s. The sirenians evolved from an ancestor they share with the elephant, their closest living land relative.
