Talk:Manatee

Just wanted to say that this looks great!

Thanx! Several of us worked hard on creating the table. --maveric149

True or false??

True or false: manatees are extinct. 66.32.114.213 02:42, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

false

Translation of the week

Hi, as part of the Translation of the week series, I'm translating this article into Southern Min. It would be nice to know more about its physical features. Currently there's description of the tail (vis-a-vis dugong) and we know it can "reach 4.5 meters (15 feet) or more in length" (this latter part seems to refer to the Florida sub-species). A-giau 06:46, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New to Wikipedia (and responding late to a much earlier piece!) but thought that this one was fascinating. There are extremely rare reports of dugong on the very southern coast of China. I hope that your Southern Min translation efforts will include the dugong. (During a recent trip to China I saw a Chinese alligator that was killed by locals - local teachers maintained that it was an exotic from the US, despite my best attempts to assure them that there were alligators in China. I would hate for the same fate to befall a dugong wandering in Chinese waters.)

Who is who

"The Florida Manatee is by some considered a distinct species, but ITIS treats it as a subspecies of T. manatus, and this is now usual. It can reach 4.5 meters (15 feet) or more in length, and lives both in fresh and salt water. It was once hunted for its oil and flesh but is now legally protected." Is this all Florida Manatee, or did we return to the Manatee in general somewhere? Aliter 00:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, the Amazon manatee only lives in fresh water, so presumably it must the Florida manatee.

--Anothercopywriter 20:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The West Indian manatee, Trichechus manatus, is a species distinct from the Amazonian manatee, T. inunguis, and the West African manatee, T. senegalensis. To the best of my knowledge, no scientist considers the Florida manatee to be a distinct species. Domning and Hayek (1986 Marine Mammal Science 2(2):87-144) and Hatt (1934 Natural History 66:533-566) agree that the West Indian manatee can be divided into 2 subspecies: (1) the Florida manatee (T. m. latirostris) and (2) the Antillean or Caribbean manatee (T. m. manatus). However, recent genetic (mtDNA) research suggests that the West Indian manatee actually falls out into 3 groups, which are more or less geographically distributed as: (1) Florida and the Greater Antilles; (2) Central and Northern South America; and (3) Northeastern South America (Garcia-Rodriguez 1998 Molecular Ecology 7:1137-1149; Vianna et al. in press Molecular Ecology). Whether these 3 groups should be classified as 3 subspecies is currently debated among sirenian specialists. This recent research also discovered West Indian-Amazonian manatee hybrids near the mouth of the Amazonian River!

I believe that the largest Florida manatee on record was a 13' female weighing in at just over 3500 lbs. However this enormous size is rare. A more typical Florida manatee weighs 1000-1200 lbs and is about 10' long. In Belize, adults range from 8' to 10' and weight 800-1000 lbs. This may be more typical of the Caribbean (Antillean) subspecies. I'm not sure where the upto 15' came from. Caribbean manatees are still hunted (illegally) for their meat in the Wider Caribbean Region. http://www.sirenian.org Mermaid101 07:25, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey!

I love the site. I am doing a school project and I ran accross this, and I definitely will come back!

Were manatees once called "mermaids"? 65.8.115.110 22:05, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

                      -Northwoods122009       -Northwoods122009

Apparently there was some intial confusion amongst early seafarers regarding manatees. Columbus, on his first trip to the Caribbean, described manatees as mermaids and was disappointed that they were not as pretty as legend had made them out to be. I'm not aware of instances wherein manatees were once called mermaids, although Linnaeus and early taxonomists favored manatees and dugongs with the order "sirenia" after the mythological Greek sirens who lured sailors to their deaths with their songs.

On another note, the 15 foot manatee cited in the species account comes from a paper by Gunter, a mamalogist in the southern US who worked in the region from the 1940s and later. There's some thought that manatees could indeed reach this length in the past - nowadays most Florida manatees rarely reach 10 to 15 years of age and, therefore, don't reach their maximum growth potential. I believe that the most recent record length for a Florida manatee was 411 cm (whatever that translates to). The cited 3500 pound, 13 foot manatee was an anomaly - the measurements came from a fresh dead female carrying twin fetuses. The weight was atypical, although the length was within the range of some of the larger animals whose carcasses have been recovered.

Does Manatee live outside of the water as well?

Manatees (and dugongs) are mammals and must surface to breathe air. However, they are totally aquatic. In other words they spend thier entire lives in the water - they do not spend anytime on land. This is different from other marine mammals such as seals and sealions, which come out of the water to breed and birth thier young. Mermaid101 07:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Manatees are indeed aquatic animals and spend their lives in the water. However, there are specific instances wherein manatees (and possibly dugongs)come out of the water. Manatees occasionally beach and wind up in tidal pools and/or mudflats. When harassed, they may attempt to "pect walk" where they use their pectorals to get out of the tide pools or mudflats and back into the water. Estrous females, when pursued by amorous males, may attempt to elude their suitors by beaching themselves. Amazonian manatees, during drought periods, wind up in very shallow muddy stretches of water where they fast and wait for the rains to come. (That's apparently a very hazardous situation for them - they are very visible to locals who hunt manatees in these pools. I believe that there's also a paper documenting a manatee killed by a panther foraging in one of these pools.) Manatees in habitats where they must feed on fringing plants will occasionally pull their upper body onto the shore while feeding. Don't know much about dugongs, although there's an account of dugongs stranded on land due to a typhoon (or whatever they're called in Australia.)

Marilyn Manson's Mystery Manatee

This line:

"Marilyn Manson is said to own a manatee (a West Indian Manatee to be precise) named Jamal who lives in his swimming pool"

was on the page toward the bottom until I removed it today.

It seems rather unlikely that Marilyn Manson owns a Manatee named Jamal that he keeps in his swimming pool. I haven't turned up any mention of this online-- if anybody has a reliable reference to this, please respond. Otherwise, it's just silly.

That fact is derived from an episode of British comedy Bo Selecta, in which Manson was lampooned in the show's spoof of MTV Cribs. Naturally, it isn't true.

Manatees have toenails?

Wait, what? Wouldn't the manatee be more related to, say, the dugong? Or, perhaps, the porpose or seal or dolphin or some other aquatic mammal? Wouldn't they be more closely related to whales than to elephants? Surely whales once came from the land, too, due to vestigal hind legs still existing in their skeletal systems, but I don't see why manatees would be at all closely related to the elephant. Can I see some sources for this claim in the "Genetics" section, please? -JC 07:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Manatees may be more closely related to elephants than whales and dolphins, I don't know. I removed the entire thing. I suppose elephants and manatees are both sub-ungulates, but I don't see that as signifigant. The closest living relatives of manatees are obviously dugongs, as they share an order. Revert (but add a source) if someone thinks it should be there. Thursday Postal 15:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The manatee is more closely related to the dugong. But they are not more closely related to the whales than to elephants. Sirenians share a common ancestor with the elephant and recent genetic analysis confirms the relationship even better than does mere anatomical inspection (toenails, elephant-like skin, trunk-like lip formation etc). This is readily discerned by doing ANY level of casual research at all, as you can hardly find a source that doesn't claim a familial relationship exists between elephants, manatees and dugongs. If the information needs to be cited in order to appear here, than that's fine. But if you "don't see why manatees would be at all closely related to the elephant" than you must have, prior to posting a veracity challenge regarding manatee biology, arrived at everything you know about the manatee directly from this article, which is strange since you must necessarily have access to the rest of the internet. Rothic 15:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eating Manatees

I keep puting up "Eating Manatees" because it's true. I have verifiable sources, I have websites, books, and first hand accounts. Why is it being deleted? I have stated, that Manatees are not eaten any more, because they're endangered, but they used to be. --Adam Wang 16:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a verifiable source, add it back in an appropriate section and leave a source. Truth isn't as important here as verifiability, sadly, but information that can be verified and has some importance should be kept. As much as the thought of eating manatees makes me sad, Wikipedia is not censored just because I don't want to think about eating manatees :P -JC 16:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From the same author of the twice-deleted Manatee Steak article. Any edible animal gets eaten by someone, somewhere. I've left two sentences. A reference for the fact doesn't automatically give encyclopedic notability to quoting recipes. Yeah, an image of a manatee with a badly photoshopped overlay of a t-bone steak is funny, once. Now cut that out and stop fooling around. Femto 12:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merging

It has been suggested that Eating Manatees be merged with Manatee. I disagree. I wasn't done Eating Mantees when the merge was suggested. When i'm done, the article should be longer by at least 4 times. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MUBOTE (talk • contribs) .

Popular culture

[1]: Removed as nonnotable. Please don't let this degrade like llama or squirrel, where half the page consists of semi-notable media references and random trivia collections. There's nothing wrong with having a cultural references section, if it's on the level like that of rabbit for example. But I don't think explanations of obvious insults and cartoon side gags are of encyclopedic notability to this article. Femto 13:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that manatees' appearance on South Park should remain in the section, as it illustrates manatees' rising popularity and is simply an interesing tidbit.