Manatees: Living Mermaids

Centuries ago sailors spotted manatees and thought it was a human face with the body of a whale. The sailors decided that if there were men in the sea, there must also be women, and imagined these women to be very beautiful. Hence mermaids came into being.

Christopher Columbus wrote in 1493, "Sighted three mermaids. They are not as beautiful as painted."

Indeed manatees are not the prettiest creatures in the sea. These slow moving, gentle mammals are very large. Nine to thirteen feet long, they can weigh up to 3,500 pounds. Their head is a large misshapen blob, with a blunt nose and whiskers on the upper lip. Their large or grayish-brown body narrows down to a flat paddle-like tail. The skin is thick and wrinkled.

Manatees have two broad flippers with three or four fingernails on each flipper. The flippers are used to help in steering and turning. Flippers are also use as hands to hold food when the manatee eats.

Manatees eat water plants. Because plants need sunlight, which can only reach about fifteen feet below water, manatees must live in shallow water where the food supply is. Manatees eat about two hundred pounds of plants a day. The calorie count in plants is low, so they need to eat a lot of plants to get enough nourishment.

Manatees can live in either fresh or salt water and you can find them in coastal and inland waterways from Brazil to Virginia. In the winter they will gather in herds in the warm waters of Florida.

Manatees were at one time thought to be related to whales and seals. It is now known that's not true. Billions of years ago their ancestors walked on land. They went into the swamps in search of plants to eat and evolved into sea creatures. Some of their ancestors stayed on land and evolved into elephants. If you think about it you can see the similarities between these cousins. Both elephants and manatees are large gray animals with wrinkled skin covered with very fine hair.

Manatees have no natural enemies. Long ago they were hunted by man for food. Amazon Indians also used the skin to make leather for their war shields. Today, manatees are on the endangered species list and can no longer be hunted.

Because manatees must live in shallow water, their biggest enemy today is propellers of motorboats. Just about any manatee you might see today in the United States will have scars on its body where propellers have struck them. Motorboats are the cause for one-third of manatee's deaths.

If no vital organs are injured, the manatees has a good chance of surviving being hit by propellers because they heal quickly. There is a chemical in the blood of marine mammals that makes it clot when water hits the wound. This is one way of keeping predators away from the injured mammal that might be attracted by the smell of blood.

In hopes of saving the manatee, there are several refuges in Florida that are off-limits to boats, swimmers, and divers.

If manatees are to survive, man must learn not to pollute the water and be careful when boating in shallow waters where manatees live.