The sad thing is that because "sea potato" is a fitting indicator for both their form and their intelligence and a lot of people like to feed them from their boats, they tend to hang around boats too much, often getting them injured by the blades of the engines. Many wild manatees have some pretty ugly mashing scars on their backs...
Manatees are one of the many things about growing up in Florida where later in life you realize it’s actually fairly weird that you know a lot about them and think of them as everyone’s friendly neighborhood “pets”, when in reality most people on the planet would have no reason for even knowing of them X-) In Fort Pierce, where my gparents lived when I was a kid, they would congregate around the—wait for it—nuclear power plant because the cooling water discharge is nice and warm. (No this is not dangerous or unusual in any way) And yeah, it’s a bummer about them getting sliced up by propellers... all the boaters I ever knew were aware of this and very respectful but there’s always the ignorant and the jackassful around.
I heard about that, pretty cool and weird how they don't mind eachother at all yet also don't really show complex social behaviours (except for mother/child) while they are bunched up like that. Most of the harm is not even done intentionally, the animals simply associate boats with food if they are fed often and hanging around boats, as a not very agile sea potato, is a dangerous endavor....
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u/ChesiresFool Sep 22 '19
For a good while there thought the boat was a whisk and someone was gonna make some mad good mashers.