Why It Sucks To Be Born As a Manatee

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]You slide out of your mother somewhere in the Caribbean Sea and the current pushes you sideways before you even open your eyes. You need air so you kick your tail and push upward with your flippers pressing against the water until your nose breaks the surface. You take your first breath then drop back down toward your mother. She moves slowly along the bottom with her body grazing the sea grass and you follow close behind her staying just above her back. But the current picks up and pulls you sideways carrying you further from her with each second. You kick harder trying to push back against it but it keeps pulling you out toward the open water. Your mother turns when she sees you drifting, swims toward you and pushes you back with her snout until you're close again. A few minutes later you need air again so you rise to the surface and breathe then drop back down. Your mother is still feeding below you pulling sea grass from the bottom with her lips and chewing slowly. You're not ready for that yet so you press against her side and find where the milk is. That's your first meal and you stay there until she pulls away and moves along the bottom again.

[00:00:54]Then something large passes overhead casting a shadow across the sea grass.

[00:00:57]It's a bull shark moving through the water above you with its body turning slowly as it goes. Your mother stops completely and holds still so you do the same pressing flat against her side. The shark circles once then moves on and disappears into the distance. You stay still for a while longer after it's gone. You've only been alive for a few minutes but you've already learned that the ocean doesn't wait for you to be ready. You're 3 weeks old now and your mother has started moving further from where you were born with you following close behind her with your flippers pushing steadily to keep up. She stops at a wide sea grass bed and drops her head down to feed pulling long strands from the bottom and chewing slowly. You watch her do it then drop your own head down and try to pull a strand free but your lips can't grip it properly yet so it slips out and drifts away. You try again on a thicker patch and this time a small piece tears free and you chew it down. That's the first plant you've ever eaten and your body still needs her milk to survive but something in you keeps going back to try the grass again. Then your mother stops chewing and holds completely still with her body flat against the bottom. You don't know why at first but then a large tiger shark moves in from the side with its body turning slowly as it closes the distance between you. Your mother pushes you down with her snout, pressing you against the sea grass so you stay low, and then she turns to face the shark with her full body between you and it. The shark moves closer, trying to get around her, but she keeps turning with it, blocking every angle. After a while, the shark loses interest and moves away into open water. Your mother holds her position for a little longer before she starts feeding again, and you drop down beside her and try the grass one more time. You manage to pull a full strand free this time, and you chew it down slowly with your flippers resting flat at your sides. You're going to keep following her for a long time yet, but at some point, she'll stop waiting for you to catch up. Skip forward a bit, and you're 1 year old now, with your body twice the size it was when you were born, and your mother's milk no longer making up most of what you eat. You've been feeding on sea grass every day, and today you've moved further from her than you ever have before, following a thick sea grass bed along the bottom on your own with your flippers pulling you slowly forward. The grass here is longer and grows in a wide flat stretch, so you drop your head and start pulling strips free, chewing through them one after another. You've been feeding for a while when another manatee drops down from above and moves straight toward your patch. It's a juvenile, bigger than you, and it pushes its body in front of yours and starts pulling the same grass, forcing you to back away from the best part of the bed. You need to eat, so you move around to the other side and try to get back to the thicker section, but the juvenile turns its body and blocks you again with its tail sweeping across the sea grass and knocking your head sideways. You back off and move to the edge of the bed where the grass is shorter and harder to pull free. And you spend a long time there working through what's left while the bigger juvenile feeds through the middle. After a while, the juvenile rises to the surface to breathe and then moves away. So, you go straight back to the thick section and feed until your stomach is full. That's the first time you've had to fight for food, and you lost the best part of the meal, but you stayed, and you ate. Soon, your mother will stop coming back for you altogether, and after that, every meal will be yours to win on your own.

[00:03:48]You're 2 years old now, and your mother has stopped coming back. The last time you saw her, she turned and swam away from you. And after waiting for a long time with your body hovering above the seagrass bed, you finally accepted that she wasn't going to return. So, you turned and swam on your own, following the coastline with your flippers pushing slowly and steadily with no direction in mind except forward. After a few days of moving alone and feeding on whatever grass you could find, you remember the spring you discovered months ago. So, you turn and swim toward it, following the same route your body already knows.

[00:04:17]When you get there, a juvenile manatee is already feeding for the best patch of grass at the bottom, pulling up long strips and chewing through them slowly.

[00:04:24]It's the same size as you, maybe a little smaller, and this time you don't back away. You swim straight toward it and push your body in front of its head, blocking its path to the grass below.

[00:04:33]The juvenile tries to move around you, so you turn with it and push again, bumping your side into its with your full weight behind it. It backs up, trying to get past you a second time, but you hold your position and push once more, harder than before, so it turns and moves to the edge of the bed where the grass is shorter. That's the same spot you were forced into last time. But today, you're the one who kept the middle. You drop your head and pull the longest strips free, feeding through the best section while the other juvenile works the edges. You stay until your stomach is full, then rise to the surface to breathe and drop back down again. You've held your own ground for the first time, but there are much bigger manatees in these waters, and eventually one of them will want what you have. You're 4 years old now, and your body has grown large enough that most things in the water leave you alone. You've been spending your days moving between seagrass beds along the coast, feeding through the morning and resting near the surface in the afternoon with your back rising just above the water to breathe. One afternoon, your body starts to slow down. Your flippers stop pulling as hard as they normally do, and after a while, you stop moving altogether and sink to the bottom with your belly resting against the sand. You stay there for a long time, with your body barely moving except to rise for air and drop back down again. A manatee in this state can die if it stays too long, so when a group of four older manatees passes above you, moving steadily along the coastline, You push off the bottom and follow them. They swim for a long time without stopping, moving past two seagrass beds you know well and continuing further along the coast than you've ever gone. You stay close behind the last one in the group with your flippers pushing hard to keep up. Then they turn toward a stretch of the coast where a spring pushes water up from below the sand, and the whole group drops down and spreads out across the bottom, pressing their bodies close to the spring and resting there with their flippers lying flat at their sides. You drop down beside them, and your body starts moving again with your flippers pulling steadily and your tail sweeping in slow regular beats. That's the first time you followed another manatee somewhere you didn't already know, and it saved your life. You'll remember this place, and next time you won't need anyone to lead you here. Skip forward a bit, and you're 8 years old now, and your body has reached its full size with your length stretching over 3 m and your weight pushing you heavily through the water with each tail beat. For the past few days, you've been following a female manatee along the coast, staying close behind her with several other males doing the same thing. All of you pushing and turning around her in a loose group that keeps moving no matter where she goes. This is your first mating herd, and the rules are simple. The male who stays closest to the female the longest gets to mate. So you push forward, trying to get past the male directly ahead of you, and he turns his body and rams into your side, forcing you wide.

[00:07:01]You swing back in, pushing with your full weight, and this time you knock him sideways far enough to get past him and pull up alongside the female. But a larger male comes in from the other side and drives his body between you and her, pushing you back with his bulk so you lose your position again. You circle wide and come back in from behind, working your way up through the group one body length at a time, pushing and being pushed until after a long time you finally get close enough to the female that the others can't cut you off. A few minutes later, it's done. The female pulls away, and the group starts to break apart with each male drifting off in a different direction. You turn and swim away from the group on your own, moving back along the coast toward the seagrass beds you know. You've passed something on now. Somewhere in these waters, a calf will be born that carries part of you forward, but your body has taken a beating over the years, and the coast ahead still holds things that haven't found you yet. You're 10 years old now, and there's a wide sea grass bed at the edge of a river mouth that you've been coming back to for 2 years, feeding through it each day and driving off any other manatee that tries to move into the middle of it. Today, you drop down to the bottom and start pulling up long strips of grass, working steadily through the thickest section with your flippers holding you flat against the riverbed. Then a younger bull comes in from the side, bigger than the juveniles you've dealt with before, and pushes straight into your feeding area with his body angled toward the best part of the grass. You turn and swim at him with your full weight behind you, ramming your side into his and forcing him back.

[00:08:20]But he holds his position and pushes back, so the two of you press against each other with your tails sweeping hard, neither one moving for a long time. He breaks away and circles wide, then comes back in from a different angle, trying to get past your tail and into the grass behind you. You spin faster than he expects and catch him head-on, driving your forehead into his side and pushing him sideways across the riverbed. He kicks away, circles once more, and comes back in a third time, but this time you're already moving toward him before he gets close, so he pulls up and holds still with his body facing yours. After a while, he turns and swims away from the bed, moving back toward the open water of the river mouth. You watch him go, then drop your head back down and carry on feeding through the rest of the grass. That's the third bull you've driven away from this bed, but each one that comes is a little bigger than the last, and eventually one of them won't turn away.

[00:09:05]You're 12 years old now, and your body carries the marks of everything you've been through, with old scars running across your back and your tail, edges worn down from years of pushing against the riverbed. Today, you're moving through a narrow river channel, following the route you've taken dozens of times before, with your flippers pulling you slowly along the bottom and your body staying low as the channel gets tighter on both sides. You need air, so you rise toward the surface with your nose pushing upward and your tail sweeping in a long, slow beat. You break the surface, breathe, and drop back down, continuing forward along the channel floor with your body grazing the sand, then something explodes off the bottom directly beneath you. A large crocodile drives up from the sand with its jaws opening wide and clamps down across your tail with its full body twisting sideways, pulling you down and backwards in one hard movement. You kick forward with everything you have with your flippers pushing against the water and your whole body straining toward the surface, but the crocodile has its feet braced against the riverbed and keeps pulling you back with each twist of its body. Your tail stops responding. The crocodile rolls once, dragging you sideways across the bottom, and you kick with your flippers trying to pull free, but the grip holds and each roll takes you further down. You push once more toward the surface with your flippers beating hard, but your body stops moving upward and starts sinking instead. The crocodile rolls a final time and holds still on the riverbed with your body pressed flat against the sand. The water above you carries a thin cloud of red downstream and then clears. The channel is still, and somewhere further up the coast, a calf that carries part of you is learning to pull its first strip of seagrass from the bottom.