BootsnAll Travel Network



Smitten with Manatees

No reply from the OUEC yet. I suppose expedition proposals have to be in by October, and from what I remember of the club they don’t have regular meetings during term time, just some speaker events. Maybe somebody will pick up on it next academic year…

I may only have seen a grey back arching out of the water, but I must say I’m smitten with manatees. Somebody told me that they are used to keep waterways clear of weeds in Guyana. Apparently there are many of them, so I’m looking up Guyana as a potential destination for next winter 😉

I’m finding out surprising things. Here is a link to a blog entry about a boy feeding grass to two manatees as if they were ponys. They are surprisingly tame. Note the tiny eyes—manatees in the clear waters of Florida have bigger eyes.

[EDIT: no wonder, they are Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inungius) (see comments in blog link), not Trichechus manatus, the West Indian manatee which occurs in Guyana as well and is the principal species used for weed control, as far as I know. Interesting to see bank feeding in Amazonian manatees which have poor eyesight.]

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