Manatee Calf: It's a Girl!

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Manatee Calf: It’s a Girl!

January 14, 2022

Burgers' Zoo's young manatee is doing well and we have good news. Officials know the gender of the youngest sprout of the Mangrove.

To determine the sex of a manatee, the distance between the opening of the erogenital opening and the anus of the animal is examined. With male manatees this opening is located in the middle of the abdomen, far from the anus. While female manatees have this opening is at the end of the abdomen, close to the anus and tail.

Burgers' Zoo had to wait a while until zookeepers could take a good look at the belly of the young manatee. There was some uncertainty for a while, but they can now state with full conviction that the young manatee is a female.

That is very positive news for the breeding program that includes these manatees. Each animal is very valuable to zoos in Europe, but at the moment there are significantly more males than females. With the arrival of this young manatee, it is possible that a new bloodline can be set up.

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One response to “Manatee Calf: It’s a Girl!”

Michael

January 15, 2022

I feel sorry for manatees. It seems like an easy life — being too big for anything in their environment to eat (as an adult); nothing to do but graze on sea grass all day. But in the wild they are mutilated by boat propeller strikes, and now climate change is destroying their habitat faster than they can adapt. Ordinarily, I feel sorry for zoo animals living in limited, artificial environments, but these may be better off. Plus it’s a big tank and manatees don’t like to move around much anyway.
Unless I’m missing something, they are the only herbivorous marine mammal. Every other mammal species that moved back to the water was a hunter. Manatees really are gentle giants.
One point about the captions — though the title and the text both identify the gender, the captions never do. They go straight from “Officials know the gender …” to “That is very positive news …” making it sound like the good news is merely knowing, not that it’s a female. Whoever did the captions had to summarize the text, and they took a little too much out.

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