Manatees eat about 10 to 15 percent of their body weight each day. The manatee has a large, flexible, prehensile upper lip, used to gather food and eat and for social interaction and communication. Since Manatees habitat is in both freshwater and saltwater, they can eat both freshwater and saltwater plants. They use power plant outflows to stay warm. The manatee’s closest relatives are the elephant and the hyrax (a small, gopher-sized mammal). Amazonian manatees are smaller, reaching a length of 2.8 metres (9.2 feet) and a weight of 480 kg (1,056 pounds), and, unlike the other two species, they are darker gray in colour, commonly have a white patch on the chest, and lack nails on the flippers. Although manatees are herbivores, sometimes sea squirts, mollusks, or any of several species of zooplankton can be inadvertenly eaten while the manatee feeds on seagrasses. A unique feature manatees have amongst all mammals is constant replacement of their molar teeth, called “marching molars”. Manatees have shorter snouts than their fellow sirenians, the dugongs. When resting, they only come up for air about every 20 minutes. In the course of a day, they may eat up to 8% of their body weight. The West Indian manatee is related to the West African manatee, the Amazonian manatee, the dugong, and Steller’s sea cow, which was hunted to extinction in 1768. The plants manatees eat have a low nutritional value, so they make up for that by eating large quantities of them. A manatee weighs 800-1200 lbs, therefore they need to eat roughly 100 lbs of sea grass and plants daily. 2. When swimming, manatees sometimes do flips underwater or roll about, and they even swim upside down. Amazonian manatees do most of their feeding during the wet season, when they eat new vegetation in seasonally flooded backwaters. Despite weighing 1,000 pounds or more, manatees do … Manatees are herbivores meaning that manatees usually eat plants. These creatures are very solitary and spend about half of their day sleeping submerged. Manatees Like to Eat! West African manatees closely resemble West Indian manatees and are similar in size. Check out all these cool facts: Manatees live in shallow coastal waters and rivers, feeding on sea grass and algae. Manatees may look like the Eeyores of the sea, but they’re really interesting animals. A. Q. Manatees are believed to have evolved from a wading, plant-eating animal. Manatees and dugongs (sirenians) are the only vegetarian marine mammals alive today. New teeth are consistently entering the back of their mouth, taking the place of the old worn-out molars in the front. 8. They feed mostly during the wet season, when there is plenty of new vegetation, storing the food in their fat reserves. A manatee needs to eat 10-15% of its body weight each day. At birth, baby manatees weigh about 30 kilograms (66 lb) each. As marine mammals, manatees need a temperate environment to survive through the winter. African manatees are classed as a vulnerable species and are on the IUCN Red List. They are the victims of … Do manatees ever eat plankton or small fish? Photograph: Lucy Keith-Diagne/African Aquatic Conservation Fund The … That would be like an average man needing to eat 8 full heads of cabbage per day. Amazon manatees are exclusively vegetarian (herbivores), feeding on water lettuce and hyacinth. 9. During the dry season (September – March), when they congregate in the main river channels or in deep parts of larger lakes, they may fast for weeks or months for lack of available food plants. As herbivores, they can eat about ten percent of their body weight every day, and are chomping a good portion of the day. It takes them about 7 hours per day to graze on food. Since 1990, at least 87 species of marine mammals — including dolphins, porpoises and manatees — have been served up in 114 countries. 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