West Indian Manatee

West Indian Manatees are known as the sea cows of the coast. Have you ever seen one before?

Task 1: Watch the video clip on the site. Make sure you watch carefully so you can see what West Indian Manatees look like..

Task 2: Brainstorm using some of your senses. What can you see/hear/feel if you were to ever see a West Indian Manatee? Think about the shape of the Manatee, what you think it’s skin might feel like. Take a note of its environment. What does a West Indian Manatee need to survive?

In this table, write the descriptive words that you would be able to see/hear/smell/touch/taste.

Need some help? - make sure that you are using your own words… if you happen to find a word that you don’t know the meaning of, search what it means and then you can use them in your writing!

Task 3: Write a description about what a West Indian Manatee is. Keep in mind what needs to be in its environment

Start writing here: Reaching up to 4 meters long and weighing as much as 600 kilograms, West Indian manatees look more like small cars than people.

Despite their large size, West Indian manatees are graceful swimmers. Although they usually move along in slow motion, they can also cruise, or swim at a steady pace, at eight kilometers an hour. In short bursts they can even top 24 kilometers an hour!

While cruising, manatees push themselves forward by moving their strong tails up and down. They steer with the help of their flexible flippers. When in shallow water, manatees use their flippers to walk, slowly placing one in front of the other. Like whales and dolphins, manatees are mammals. Although they live in water, they have to surface frequently to breathe air. While swimming, manatees take in air every three or four minutes. When they are resting, they can stay underwater for up to 15 minutes.

Manatees are gentle animals. They rarely fight, and they have no natural enemies.

Subsisting on water plants and plants that grow at the water's edge, a manatee takes in up to 0.5 kilogram of food for every 5 kilograms it weighs. and Sailors once mistook manatees for mermaids. The scientific name for the zoological order manatees belong to, Sirenia, comes from the word “siren,” a sea creature from Greek mythology whose beautiful songs lured sailors to shipwreck.

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