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manatees are gentle creatures consisting of three species that live in warm coastal waters and river basins. Manatees, also known as manatees, are known to spend much of their day grazing and curiously exploring the world around them. As you might imagine from the nickname “sea cow”, manatees are large, herbivorous creatures that regularly weigh 1,000 pounds or more. That fact will probably raise the question, what do manatees eat to maintain that weight?
We’ll show you what foods these dopey creatures like and how they find their meals.
What do manatees like to eat?
Manatees eat many types of freshwater and saltwater plants and are primarily herbivores. They will consume plants that grow at the bottom of water bodies, floating plants, vegetation near the shoreline, and emergent plants that are rooted in the water but extend above the waterline.
Manatees are not very picky about the food they consume. With the amount of food they have to eat every day, they can’t afford it!
To properly feed themselves, manatees often spend several hours of their day grazing in search of food.
A list of the foods that manatees eat
With so much time spent grazing the warm coastal waters around the Gulf Coast, in the Amazon Basin or in West AfricaManatees are found in many different foods. Of course, that means some manatees eat foods that others don’t, simply because their species live in areas that are so far away from each other.
Making an exhaustive list of the 60 or more foods they encounter and consume would be impractical, so we’re going to focus on the more common foods.
Some of the foods that manatees like to eat include:
These aquatic mammals are also known to eat acorns and even eat fish in some cases, but it is very rare.
Manatees prefer to eat all the above types of vegetation, and their bodies are made to digest it and get nourishment.
We also need to consider the eating habits of baby manatees. if mammals, calves drink from the mother’s teats located under their pectoral fins. The milk is mostly water but also contains fats and proteins. Interestingly, manatees feed underwater.
After living for a few weeks, the manatees begin to eat plants on their own.
How much do manatees eat?
Manatees are large creatures that regularly weigh between 800 and 1000 pounds. They eat everywhere in between 5% to 11% of their body weight daily, more than 100 pounds of vegetation.
They spend a lot of time looking for food and eating, but that comes with the territory they are closely related to the elephant.
How do manatees forage for food?
Manatees eat many different plants while swimming in coastal waters and rivers. They tend to feed at the top of the water, in the middle of the “water column” and near the bottom.
When they are up in the water, they come to the surface, collect the food in their mouths and chew it before moving on to graze on other plants.
Manatees also consume food at the bottom of the water body. In that case they will really earn their name manateesas they graze over the specific plants and use their fins and lips to direct food to their mouths.
In some cases, manatees have been seen pulling themselves out of the water a bit to feed on vegetation along the water’s banks.
The Amazonian manatee is a unique species when it comes to its eating habits. The manatees that live in the deeper waters of the Amazon often fast for the last two months of the year as water levels drop and their access to their food supply is limited.
This species can also go much longer without food if needed.
Fasting is not necessarily harmful to these manatees as they are well adapted to survive long periods without eating much due to their low metabolism. During Lent, manatees will reduce their activity level.
What predators do manatees face?
Surprisingly, manatees don’t have many predators in the wild. although crocodiles prey on the young, most adult manatees are able to dive deep enough into the water to kill them and other predators such as sharks.
Humans, although they do not prey on manatees for food, pose a significant danger to the population.
Human impacts on manatee habitats
Predators are not the only problem manatees face. Humans have impacted manatee habitats everywhere they live, developing coastal areas and installing water management systems. Both actions tend to ruin food sources for the manatees or outright kill them.
Humans also harm these creatures in a different way. These animals are not always fast swimmers, they usually move at a speed of between 3 and 5 miles per hour. However, they are capable of short-term bursts of speed. Unfortunately, their speed is no match for boats
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Since manatees live in areas like Florida where private motorboats and shipping vessels whiz through the water, manatees are the victims of boat attacks. While some of them survive these interactions with boats, they don’t always learn to avoid boats because they are curious creatures. They also face infections in their boat blow wounds which can also be fatal.
The manatee is a sweet creature that eats a variety of plants in large quantities. Each species has preferred foods native to their area, and they all face unique challenges. Unfortunately, manatees face several challenges in their lives.
Humans destroy their food sources, damage their ecosystems and accidentally kill them with their ships. As a result, all three species are considered endangered. Humans can help reverse this problem, but to some extent the inquisitive nature of manatees is such that they continue to run into human activity with negative results.
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