Happy Superhero Friday! In this installment of Anything-Goes, I, your fearless blog post-writer, come out from behind the curtain and join in the discussion. I join Brian and Sarah in this episode and we cover a lot of material. Since I'm part of the...
Happy Superhero Friday! In this installment of Anything-Goes, I, your fearless blog post-writer, come out from behind the curtain and join in the discussion. I join Brian and Sarah in this episode and we cover a lot of material. Since I'm part of the discussion this week, what you'll find in the blog post is information you never really cared about in regard to manatees. And why they are our nemeses.
Manatees, aka Sea Cows, are our nemeses. Why, you ask? We hate to totally blame it on rhyming, but that's largely why this phrase began to get tossed around. Interestingly, though they are often colloquially referred to as sea cows, they are more closely related to elephants. Their slow nature and tendency to be eaten by other animals is slightly contradictory to their ability to swim swiftly. I might label elephants as majestic, but certainly not graceful... And that might be owed to the animated Disney film Jungle Book which portrayed elephants trampling down through the forest.
Poor manatees. It's not their fault they look so goofy. Evolution has been incredibly kind to some creatures, and incredibly cruel to others. Isn't it funny how we can look at an elephant and think, 'How majestic!' or watch a panda in captivity for extended hours at a time via live stream... then there are also animals like the blobfish (named one of the top 20 ugliest animals on Earth).
Animals have such a different purpose than humans do on Earth. Their only fault is our perception of their appearance. Manatees spend 8 hours a day gathering food for their young and because of their slow-paced lifestyles, they only reproduce every 2-5 years. Their entire workday is spent ensuring their kiddos have enough to eat. And not just making money in order to buy the food to bring home the bacon, but literally bringing home bacon. Except... not literally bacon because manatees are herbivores. Imagine if we spent 8 hours a day gathering food for the people we were responsible for. Imagine acknowledging what we were capable of and living within our means.