A NEW FOOD MAMMAL 



Utilization of Florida Manatee Suggested by Alexander Graham Bell — Offers 



Promise of Easy Domestication, Eats Food that Is not now Used, 



Would Occupy no Agricultural Land., and Furnishes a 



Meat That Is Said To Be Delicious 



THE shortage of meat and the 

 high price of fodder make the 

 time seem opportune to call 

 attention to a food animal which 

 produces a delicious meat, which recent 

 investigations indicate would be easy of 

 domestication, which lives upon an 

 aquatic forage plant as rich in nutriment 

 as cow pea hay and which has, up to the 

 present time, been so totally neglected 

 as to be threatened by extermination. 



Dr. Alexander Graham Bell is origi- 

 nator of the idea, which is first expressed 

 in this article, that we have, so to speak, 

 a new domesticated mammal worthy of 

 serious consideration in connection with 

 the growing shortage in the meat supply 

 of the world and it is to his initiative that 

 is due the preliminary investigation 

 made in Florida this last winter and the 

 search through the literature which has 

 resulted in the present brief article. 



Compared with the pigmy hippo- 

 potamus^ as a food animal, the manatee 

 has many points of superiority. It can 

 do no harm, it lives on food plants not 

 now utilized, and it is literally like the 

 fish in our streams at our very door 

 and not in Africa. 



Florida has passed a law protecting 

 it; let the State or Federal Government 

 now pass an act to investigate the 

 possibilities in it of a new animal indus- 

 try for Southern Florida. 



The manatee,'"^ which has received the 

 popular name of sea-cow, is a docile, 

 easily domesticated mammal resembL'ng 

 a long-bodied seal in appearance. There 

 are no hind limbs, ' but a broad, 

 rounded tail, which forms a powerful 

 propeller in swimming. The skin is 

 naked like that of an elephant, sparsely 

 covered with hairs and about one inch 

 thick. The animal attains a maximum 

 length of 15 to 18 feet, and old bulls 

 weigh as much as half or three quarters 

 of a ton. The fore limbs are flipper- 

 shaped and anything but graceful, but 

 they are of good size and are used for 

 holding food and conveying it to the 

 mouth. The female carries her young 

 beneath the flipper and suckles it in 

 this position, a circumstance which 

 probably gave rise to the mermaid 

 myth, since the upper portion of the 

 body is out of the water at the 

 time. Coliunbus states that he saw 

 three mermaids on his first voyage to 



1 The possibility of utilizing the southern swamps for the breeding of this hippopotamus 

 was discussed in the Journal of Heredity, V, pp. 34-37, January, 1914. 



2 The Florida manatee is scientifically known as Trichechus latirostris. The appellation 

 "manatee," or as it was originally spelled, "manati," refers to the use of the flippers as hands in 

 conveying food to the mouth and in suckling the young. 



Two other species of manatee are known besides that which inhabits Florida; T. inungtiis, 

 which frequents the Atlantic shore from Mexico as far as the twentieth parallel of latitude south, 

 and T. senegalensis, which lives along the shores of Africa and in the Indian Ocean. All three 

 species are so similar that distinct limits to their respective habitats can hardly be marked. 



The only other existing family of the Sirenia is the Dugong or Halicore. D. diigon inhabits 

 Africa, the Red vSea, Ceylon, India, and the Malay Archipelago, D. austral is inhabiting the coasts 

 of Australia. The dugong is more distinctly marine than the manatee. The distinguishing mark 

 between the two is the tail. That of the dugong is fluted and shaped like that of a whale, while 

 the manatee possesses a broad, flat tail which is almost circular in form. 



The Sirenia form a group apart, and although they have many apparent affinities with other 

 existing animal orders, it has l^een impossible to establish any certain connection. Some believe 

 that the elephant and manatee are both descended from the same stock: others place the Sirenia 

 midway between the elephants and the porpoises. 



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