text x_quick_Title2=Class: Mammalia~Order: Sirenia~Family: Trichechidae~(Trichechus manatus)
text x_quick=Where In the World~` West Indian manatees live in the warm coastal waters of the southeastern United States, the Caribbean Sea, and along the northeastern coast of South America.~` Biologists think that there are between 1,200 and 1,500 manatees left in the world.~ ~Take a Look!~` While a small adult manatee can weigh as little as 400 pounds, a big adult can be 1,300 pounds. ~` They range in length from eight to fifteen feet long. ~` Their rounded bodies are slate-grey to brownish and are covered with fine hair that's one or two inches long. They have powerful scoop-shaped tails that help them move slowly through the water.~ ~All in the Family~` You might think that there's nothing like a manatee, but far away in the waters around northern Australia is~a very similar animal called the dugong. Until 200 years ago, another relative, called the Stellar's sea cow, swam in the colder waters of the Pacific, but it is extinct now.~ ~Just the Facts~` Manatees prefer to be alone, although small groups may gather in particularly warm waters, to migrate, or where there is a supply of the fresh or salt water plants that manatees eat (like water hyacinths in the rivers of Florida). ~` Mothers form a close bond with their calves and they stay together for more than a year.~` Manatees breed and give birth at any time throughout the year, they don't have a set breeding season. ~` Because the mother takes good care of each of her offspring and stays with them until they can survive without her, she waits about 2 and a half years before having another calf. ~` Manatees may live as long as 50 years.
;Habitat
text x_hab= Manatees can live in salt water, but they seem to prefer the fresh water of shallow coastal bays, estuaries, lagoons, and rivers. They like warm water, at about 70 degrees, but can live in water as cold as 56 degrees. They're found along both coasts of Florida, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the northeastern coast of South America. When air temperatures are over 50 degrees, manatees have been found as far north as Virginia. ~\
Manatees breathe air, but they spend all their time in water. (They'd be helpless on land.) They don't build burrows or other kinds of homes as beavers do, but swim through their habitat in search of food and protected, warm waters. Good manatee habitat must provide plenty of food, such as water hyacinth, grasses, and other tropical-water plants. A pregnant manatee needs to find a sheltered place to give birth where the water is not flowing, so she needn't fight against a current.
;Food
text x_eat= Manatees are herbivorous - that means they eat plants only. (Carnivorous animals eat only meat, and omnivorous animals, like humans, eat both.) Manatees might occasionally eat a crustacean, such as a shrimp, while munching river grasses, but that's unintentional. They eat sea grasses, but in many places the only food left is the water hyacinth found in Florida rivers and bays. Plant eaters have to consume huge amounts of food to get the nutrition they need, and scientists have found that a captive manatee will eat up to a quarter of its weight in food each day. For the larger manatees, that could be 300 pounds of plants a day! ~\
Manatees have teeth that help them rip up plants and grind them. Millions of years ago, a manatee ancestor had tusks (like a walrus's) to help rip up plants. The~only living relative of the manatee, the dugong of Australia, still has these tusks, but uses them for fighting, not for digging up plants and their roots.
;Habits and Characteristics
text x_life= Manatees don't really care if it's day or night - they eat when they want to ( and they want to about six to eight hours each day), and they sleep when they want to. Like people, manatees lie still and close their eyes to sleep. Unlike people, they may choose to sleep 10 feet underwater, on the bed of a river! Manatees are mammals, and have to breathe air, but they can stay underwater for 15 minutes, and that's long enough for a quick nap on the bottom. Sometimes, they sleep floating near the surface - it's easier to come up for air that way. Manatees rest for six to ten hours each day. ~\
They're slow-moving animals, although the broad tail is powerful enough to send them along at 15 miles an hour. They prefer shallow waters, where they can swim three to nine feet below the surface. They rarely venture into water shallower than about six and a half feet. ~\
Generally manatees travel alone, although groups will gather to migrate, feed, rest, or play. They're often seen together at sources of extra-warm water such as hot springs or the discharges from power plants. When they play together, manatees are affectionate and kiss, nibble, and embrace each other. There isn't an established society, so they don't know how to band together to protect themselves from an enemy, but scientists do think that manatees can communicate new migration routes and tell each other of new habitats when they group together. ~\
Manatees are very sensitive to sound, but they don't make many sounds themselves. They can "scream" an alarm when they're afraid or aggravated. A mother makes a high-pitched squeal to warn her calf of trouble and the calf responds with squeals of its own. Scientists believe there's a sound manatees use to find each other when they've been separated. ~\
Manatees live only in warm waters. Because there's never a winter period, when feeding and protecting young is harder, they have no breeding period but give birth at any time of the year. A manatee is pregnant for 13 months (compare that to a human, who is pregnant for 9 months), and gives birth to a 60 to 80 pound baby. When a new manatee is born, the mother swims gently beneath it and lifts it to the surface on her back so it can breathe. She waits patiently as the newborn gathers its strength. After a time, she lowers down a bit, putting the baby's nose in the water, and then comes back up again. Gradually, she gets her calf used to the water, and soon her infant is swimming along side her. The calf nurses from its mother for about two years, although it starts to eat plants after about two months.
text x_threat= Like most of the other very large animals on earth, the manatee's biggest threat is not from a natural predator, but from humans. Today, manatees suffer from having to share their rivers and bays with humans in barges and powerboats. The manatees are simply not fast enough to get out of the way. Many are killed in collisions, and almost all the living manatees bear the scars of propellers along their broad, grey backs. Scientists now use those scars to identify individuals. ~\
Manatees were hunted for their oil, their skins, and their meat. The saddest reason for the decline of the manatee happened many years ago when money-hungry hunters told the world that the manatee was a fish. Catholics in Europe and the Americas gladly ate "sea beef" on Fridays, a day they voluntarily went without meat, without realising that a manatee was a mammal, not a fish. Before the deception was uncovered, thousands of manatees had been killed. ~\
Today, manatees are very rarely hunted by native people in the Caribbean and South America who take them for badly needed food. The Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act have helped protect the manatees from hunting and their habitat from new dangers, but progress is very slow. As the use of powerboats increases, so does the harm to the few remaining manatees. ~\
Even in protected waters, manatees still suffer from the effects of pollution, which may injure or kill off the grasses and plants the manatees need to survive. Especially in Florida, a very popular place where space is precious, swamps are being drained and filled in, pushing the manatees from quiet, crystal clear backwaters into crowded, polluted waterways.~ There's good news for the manatees, though. Natural reserves have been established in some of the
