#sirenians

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

obviously I can't include everything. Rip to the various groups I was forced to leave out, including Mesosaurs, my beloveds.

#tetrapods #marine reptiles #marine mammals #penguins #mosasaurs #plesiosaurs #cetaceans #sirenians #pinnipeds #desmostylians #thalattosuchians #dyrosaurids #pliosaurs #turtles

[orcinus-veterinarius]

'pump them full of psychotropic drugs' is a new one for me (posted on a video of orphaned manatees being bottle fed)

That feeling when the psychotropic drugs kick in 😵‍💫 joking aside, it’s pretty pathetic that people still insist on believing this.

As for manatees, very, very few of them are permanently non-releasable, especially when compared with cetaceans. SeaWorld has great success releasing orphaned manatee calves, and most of their manatees on public display are orphans or other rescues getting nice and fat prior to release.

#I’ve actually been to their manatee icu #it’s pretty incredible #including ​the parts that aren’t offered as part of public tours #one of the patients at the time was a pregnant female who was released and gave birth to a healthy calf in the wild #manatees #sirenians #seaworld #wildlife rehab #ara insanity #answered asks #batplushies

[arthistoryanimalia]

Happy #ManateeAppreciationDay!

1. Plate 7 in Biologia Centrali-Americana: Zoology, Botany and Archaeology, 1879-1915

2. Plate 37 in The Wild Beasts of the World, c.1909

Click here for more info on Manatee Appreciation Day!

#manatee #manatees #sirenians #marine mammals #mammals #natural history art #scientific illustration #sciart #book art #book plate #lithograph #19th century art #20th century art #British art #European art #Manatee Appreciation Day #animal holiday #animals in art

[namu-the-orca]

Sirens of the Sea

Here’s something different; not cetaceans, but marine mammals for sure. A fun challenge from one of last year’s commission. Definitely a ways outside of my normal comfort zone, but I think they turned out okay. (Dugong and Manatee experts will no doubt be able to spot some blaring mistakes lol). I especially enjoyed painting the Dugong. Very weird, but cute at the same time. And their heads have a nice shapeliness to them. That’s nice for drawing. The manatee by contrast felt a bit more “blobby” and hard to make look right. I hope you’ll like these two Sirens - the order’s scientific name coming from a legend regarding their discovery: lonely sailors would have mistaken them for mermaids, like the sirens of Greek Mythology.

We’re almost through the (rather huge) list of illustrations from last year’s commissions by the way. Just baleen whales to go - and then..? I’m not sure because I still haven’t painted anything this year. A bit appalling how busy things stay. Hopefully soon. 

#scientific illustrations #illustrations #Dugong #Dugong dugon #West African manatee #manatee #Trichechus senegalensis #sirenia #sirenians #sirens #marine mammals #digital art

[mammalianmammals]

 Florida Manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris), family Trichechidae, in a freshwater hot spring in Florida, USA.

ENDANGERED.

photograph by Keith Ramos, USFWS

#manatee #sirenian #trichechus #trichechidae #mammal #animals #nature #north america #ocean

[ranticore]

the setting with twist & the (non-sirenian) harpies is one i don't write in and doesn't really have much of a big story, similar to siren it has a bunch of small unrelated stories in various parts of the world but the major theme is cooperative relationships between regular humans and monsters. they have a common goal but also i wanted to explore different ways that cooperation could happen (willingly or not) and the various manifestations of human and monster relationships. sometimes antagonistic sometimes not. cuinn the harpy willingly chose to protect a human village; twist was trapped and forced to work. i've already drawn the work they do but i'll talk about it laterrr here's one of the harpy falconers anyway

#one thing u might notice about me is that my favourite theme is the almost-human. the thing that's not quite human or has transcended #humanity or exists only to mimic it. it's why i insist on calling the sirenians humans when lbr here... nobody truly thinks that. #in this setting all monsters have human or human-like faces due to some disaster/curse/whatever turning a subset of the population into #monsters generations ago. not that anyone knows this. siren who what never heard of it #ice storm over kosa

[inatungulates]

Dugong Dugong dugon

with golden trevally Gnathanodon speciosus, upper, and sharksucker Echeneis naucrates, lower

Observed by popaul, CC BY-NC

#Dugong dugon #dugong #Sirenia #Dugongidae #sirenian #non-ungulate #fish #Echeneis naucrates #sharksucker #Gnathanodon speciosus #golden trevally #Africa #Egypt #Indian Ocean #Red Sea

[schleichoftheday]

Can I request Manatee #14839? I got one as a gift recently and it's so charming!

Today's Extra Schleich is:

14839 Manatee [2021 - ]

#schleich #toyblr #toycore #sirenian #manatee

[fishtomale]

dude are you telling me that manatees are more related to elephant shrews than to other aquatic mammals like seals?? are you /srs? ?

#mish.txt #decided to look up taxonomic classification of sirenians and wow

[typhlonectes]

The Odd Pod. Dolphins and a Manatee Swimming and Playing Together

Although dolphins and manatees often share the same waters in Florida, in over 30 years of observations I've never seen them give each other more than a passing glance before this. 

Dolphins will often go out of their way to go up to a manatee(s) when they see one, but it is always just for a moment to check it out. As for the manatees, even though they are exceptionally curious and playful, they don't seem to have any interest at all in dolphins. 

And so it is that I was amazed to have witnessed this magical moment of interspecies interaction while I was out canoeing. The odd pod looked like they had been swimming together for a while, it was not a brief encounter. The pod swam in together to the area I was canoeing, and when they left about an hour later they left together. 

When the dolphins got too far ahead of the manatee, they seemed to pause and wait for the manatee to catch up.

via:  See Through Canoe

#florida #ocean #marine biology #marine mammals #mammal #dolphin #cetacean #manatee #sirenian #nature #video #north america

[vickysaurus]

Manatees.

#manatee #sirenian #mammal #palaeoblr #senckenberg museum

[orcinus-veterinarius]

idk if you’d find this interesting but i think you might so i’ll share it. i hope it’s not bothering you! but i’ve learned a lot about cetacean captivity from following you and it’s made me interesting it getting other professional opinions on the matter. today i went to visit the sydney sea life aquarium in australia and the aquarists were patient enough to let me pick their brains a bit, specifically about the toki situation. interestingly enough, sealife’s parent company is explicitly anti cetacean captivity, enough so that they run a sea pen for two belugas in iceland that originally came from an aquarium that they acquired in shanghai. the marine biologist that let me bother her with my dumb questions is one of the trainers for their dugong so she has a fair bit of experience with marine mammals and she told me that her personal opinion is that toki doesn’t have the immune system for wild release and most likely isn’t going to survive a year. so a lot of the same stuff you’ve said. idk, i just thought it was interesting that even professionals who are generally anti cetacean cap (or who work for organizations that are) don’t think that it’s a good idea. sorry if you don’t really care or if this is obvious lol i just thought of you after talking with her :) as thanks for reading my long winded ask, here’s a picture of the dugong, pig, during a training session!

Hi Pig! What a cutie!

@local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti acutally used to work at this aquarium, so she can probably speak on it better than I can. I posted about the beluga sanctuary here, but basically, my opinions on SEA LIFE are *rolls eyes*. As far as aquariums go, they're fine. Their US locations are AZA accredited, but they're pretty middle-of-the-road in my opinion. I've only been to one location and wasn't overly impressed.

I also don't like the idea that fish are somehow less important and less deserving of exceptional welfare than more charismatic species like cetaceans. Sharks in particular need a lot of specialized care. But SEA LIFE is more than happy to put them in shopping malls (I don't know about the one you visited, but all their US locations are literally in malls) and publicly slander other far superior aquariums for housing cetaceans.

Of course, this is all directed at Merlin Entertainment managment, not the aquarists and trainers on the ground, who sound like they know their stuff!

#thank you for the ask! you’re definitely not bothering me ❤️ #I’m sorry if my answer is a little off topic I mostly just wanted to take a dig at merlin #sea life #tokitae #aquariums #animal welfare #beluga whale sanctuary #dugong #sirenians #answered asks #fairylightfairlybright

[zacharialend]

Reading about extinct sirenians and found this guy and immediately heard his voice

#ahm jest a tater. #a sweet tater #but a tater ah ayum #paleontology #sirenian evolution #gonna be a manatee some day #but for now #jest a sweet ol’ tater

[stellernorth]

frolicking in the 'deextinction' wikipedia page and saying Oh My God out loud at evvery other line. i have to look into it more but the timeline for a passenger pigeon-like species being created is so fucking soon. then the list of 'potential future canidates for de-extinction' holy hell. MOAS?! baijis which would be so incredible but that's a really clear we-need-to-fix-the-issues-that-killed-them-before-brindging-them-back. then. steller's fuckgin sea cow oh my goddddd that's me ! ahhh

#post i made #extinct animals #ok steller's does seem very logistically difficult bc they're so fucking huge for one #not sure how genetically close they were to other sirenians #aurochs would also be cool let's get those european megafauna but As A Vegan it does feel like a slap in the face to bring them back and #protect them while killing millions of their decendants forever and all the time #does anyone want to talk about this do send asks <3

[mammalianmammals]

 Florida Manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris), family Trichechidae, in a freshwater hot spring in Florida, USA.

ENDANGERED.

photograph by Andrew Zimmerman

#manatee #sirenian #trichechus #trichechidae #mammal #animals #nature #north america

[ranticore]

What is the other reason for the sea being fresh water?

Do they have rain? Or better: how different is their weather?

i did say one of two factors in that linked post didn't i... but i don't remember what i meant by that 😭 i wrote it a year ago and my mind is blanking

it is probably a reference to rain or the end of the last ice age causing a worldwide flood event, that would be my best bet. in terms of weather well it depends on the region, how close to the equator etc but as a rule the humidity is high everywhere except the dry areas in the eastern continent, and rains are extremely frequent (again, except for the dry areas... they are in fact above cloud level, so no rain) it's not uncommon for there to be daily rain in most of the world.

i'm not as well-versed in weather as i am in water stuff so i've played it safe and decided that it is very earth-like. the formation of the land (being in a lot of very tall narrow ridges in some places) probably effects rainfall, i could imagine there being permanent rain shadows on one side of the larger mesas. the ridges also trap wind and prevent it from propagating which is what contributes to most of the water being relatively still most of the time

the sky has a slight greeny tint just for flavour, and the water is nearly always turbid brown/green except in areas of deep and continuous sea (basically 'the dark' area labelled on the map)

because so many people live underwater, they experience weather a little bit differently to people who live overwater, and have a whole bunch of their own special underwater weather events, like blinding whiteouts of marine snow that scatters ecolocation, sudden currents that may develop in response to tectonic activity, and nutrient fluctuations causing blooms and die-offs of aquatic plants.

#setting: siren #oh also - it's freshwater because salt is actually relatively rare on this planet for whatever reason #all sirenian life forms (including the genetically modified humans) are adapted to ultra low saline conditions #oh i'm so dumb that is probably exactly what i meant by 'one of two factors'