Animal of the Month

1. Manatees are large, aquatic mammals sometimes known as sea cows.
2. Manatees are usually greyish-brown in colour and have thick, wrinkled skin. They have front flippers to help them steer or sometimes crawl through shallow water as well as a powerful flat tail, which helps propel them.
3. Manatees live in the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico (eg, Florida), the Amazon basin (eg, Brazil and Peru), and West Africa.
4. On average, manatees are between 2.8 and 3 m long, and their weights are similar to the weights of cows – between 400 and 550 kg!
5. Manatees spend half their days sleeping in the water, coming up for air at least every 20 minutes.
6. Manatees are herbivores and live on plant species, such as mangrove leaves, turtle grass and various types of algae. A medium-sized manatee would probably eat between 45 and 68 kg of food per day. That's as much as 136 boxes of cereal!
7. Manatees are slow-moving, non-aggressive and generally curious animals. They swim, on average, 4.8 to 8 km per hour but have been known to reach speeds of 32 km per hour in short bursts.
8. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed all three species of manatees – American manatees, Amazonian manatees and African manatees – as "vulnerable", which means the manatees are at risk for extinction. The main threats to manatees in the US state of Florida are boats and boat propellers, which sometimes hit and injure manatees. It is now illegal to hunt manatees in the United States, but they are still hunted in other parts of the world.
9. Manatees can live as long as 60 years, but because of the dangers they face in the wild, manatees often don't live that long.
10. Manatees communicate with each other by making sounds underwater. For example, they express fear, anger and attraction.