Animals
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Life in the Forest

Life in the River

The Insect World

Related Internet Sites

WWF Manatee Facts

Manatee Junction

Walker's Mammals

An Amazon Adventure (USA) 1

An Amazon Adventure (USA) 2

Senador Brasil

Manatee

Manatee are aquatic-living mammals, often also called sea cows. Recent theories suggest that manatees are closely related to land-based grazing animals such as cows and horses – and even that the manatee is closely related to the modern elephant.

Manatees and dugong (a related species) are found in several places around the world, including the Amazon, Caribbean Ocean, Indian Ocean, Pacific, Great Lakes, and the Red Sea. The largest ever species of manatee was Steller's sea cow which lived in the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska – but, sadly, this species was declared extinct in 1768 (only 27 years after its discovery) as a result of intensive hunting by European sealers.

The species of manatee living in the Amazon is the Amazon ox manatee. It is grey with a white patch on its chest, and has skin covered with fine hairs. The ox manatee eats aquatic grasses and other vegetation – captive manatees are capable of eating 9 to 15 kg of leafy green vegetables per day. It does most of its eating in the wet season, when the rivers flood out into nearby forests enabling manatee to feed on the leaves of submerged trees and shrubs. In the dry season, manatee are forced to return to the main waterways, where there isn't so much food – during this season they sometimes may not eat for several weeks.

Manatee are shy and rarely seen by humans. They spend almost their entire lives in the water, but usuall remain near the surface because they are mammals and need to breathe air just like we do. Generally, manatee swim with just their nostrils poking out of the water as they search river and lake bottoms for weeds and other vegetation to feed on. Being a social animal, manatee like to keep together in large herds. However, overhunting has meant that the large herds have now disappeared, and today's groups now only number about 4-8 individuals. Manatee communicate using squeaks and squeals similar to dolphins and whales.

Unhappily, the manatees of Amaz⌠nia are under serious threat. Hunting has seriously reduced their numbers due to the fact that manatee meat is a local delicacy, considered to be one of the best foods in the region. Once found, manatee are also very easy to catch because they are slow and docile – enabling hunters to easily harpoon them. The hunters then chase the animal until it is exhausted, finally suffocating it with wooden plugs inserted into its nose so that it can no longer breathe. In addition to its meat, the manatee's hide is also valued highly – it was used by the Amazon Indians for making leather shields for use in warfare, and during the 1930s and 40s many thousands of manatee were killed for hides which were then used for making hoses and machine bands. Today, the manatee is officially protected but its protected status is rarely enforced – and they are still heavily hunted to satisfy local demand for the meat (known locally as peixe-boi). Manatee are slow breeders, meaning that their numbers aren't being replenished in the wild.

Manatee are also being affected by pollution from goldmining. Mercury is a poisonous substance sometimes used by goldmines for extracting and refining gold – however, the waste often ends up in rivers and streams poisoning the local environment. If mercury ends up in the water, it is absorbed by aquatic plants which live in the water, and by the animals (such as manatee) which eat those plants.

Despite all this bad news, there is some good news for the manatee. Its grazing habits may actually help lead to its preservation. In tropical environments it is common for artificial lakes and reservoirs to become overgrown with lakeweed. Experiments in Guyana have shown that manatee reintroduced into these lakes can effectively control the weed buildup preventing the lakes from becoming overgrown.