The prototype of the mermaid, the dugong, has become functionally extinct in China, which means that there will no longer be a normal breeding dugong population in Chinese waters. But in fact, the extinction of dugongs and white-tipped dolphins is not the same, and perhaps in the near future, the "mermaid" can return to Chinese waters.
Reports of dugong extinction
The ocean is the cradle of life, but some animals have returned to the sea. 50 million years ago, a land mammal that was closely related to elephants returned to the sea. They look like cows and elephants hybrid animals, huge, up to 3 meters long, weighing up to 1,000 pounds, but mild personality, no natural enemies, life carefree... This curious marine mammal is known as the "dugong", and although they are sometimes called "manatees", they are slightly different animals from manatees.
First, why are dugongs called "mermaids"?
When Europeans first saw this animal, they mistook it for a mythical mermaid because of the shape of the forked fish's tail. This is a very easy mistake to make, and it should not be difficult for a person with a normal brain to imagine how shocked the former superstitious sailors would feel when the dugong's tail unexpectedly swept across the sea.
The dugong became the prototype of the mermaid
In order to adapt to underwater life, the body structure of the dugong has also changed accordingly, and the forelimbs have become pectoral fins, like human hands. When a female dugong feeds her cubs, she holds them with two pectoral fins, her head and upper body exposed to the water – at this time, people look from a distance like a woman holding a baby... This is probably one of the origins of mermaids.
Second, the mysterious lifestyle of dugongs overeating
Dugongs have always been mysterious. In legend, it is described as beautiful, with spindle-shaped bodies and fish-like tails. Of course, this is not the case. The dugong is a strange-looking mammal with a pig-faced head and four legs, where is it spindle-shaped? Moreover, they have large bowels and large bodies covered with rough skin – very similar to elephant skin, with sparse hard hairs, just like elephants.
Because of their rough skin, dugongs are often covered with seaweed and crustaceans, which form a small ecological community that attracts a wide variety of fish and becomes a loyal fan of dugongs. Some fish are busy cleaning up parasites from dugongs, while indigmas attach to dugongs and feed on dugong excrement; The lonely dugong, on the other hand, may not benefit anything but friendship. The fish follow the dugong as if they were the guardians of mercy, providing food and shelter for these fans.
Dugong and its legions of fans
Despite his clumsy appearance, dugongs are expert swimmers. Their huge caudal fins propel it to travel fast in the water. Dugongs never act alone, and their pectoral fins play a large role when they travel or forage on the seabed; They also often use their pectoral fins to hug and stroke children, as well as their kind. These tame, quiet underwater mammals were previously abundant in the Caribbean.
Dugongs are also known as "manatees" and, in fact, they are the largest and only vegetarian marine mammals. They eat only seaweed, and mostly fat rhizomes. With their dexterous lips, they dig up their roots and chew 40 to 50 kilograms of seagrass a day. A group of dugongs can eat a patch of seagrass the size of a football field in a day.
The reason why dugongs are called "manatees"
Dugongs' ancestors lived on land, but now they are nomadic in underwater pastures; Moreover, the plants, flowers and seagrasses it eats once grew on land.
When dugongs don't eat, they are mostly sleeping, and they ignore the noisy dolphins and the quiet sperm whale mother and child, and fall asleep. In this way, they fall asleep, forget about the changes in the tides, and take it away from their familiar homes.
Third, in addition to the Caribbean Sea, what other seas are dugongs distributed in?
The Tallahassee Great Bend Aquatic Plant Sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico is also the last refuge of dugongs. In the mangroves of the coast, the sea is calm and food is plentiful, and dugongs often feed on seaweed, of course, they also look for leaves and young branches hanging on the surface of the water to relieve their hunger. But in North America, the cold of winter can sometimes spread to the south, causing the swamp to freeze in a large area, and a cold current changes the whole swamp, and everywhere is silent and cold. The cold-blooded reptile crocodiles are dying, their bodies frozen and unable to move, and their body temperature is only a few degrees. Although dugongs are warm-blooded mammals, cold snaps can still kill them.
But the water surface, 250 kilometers from the coast, thawed, and the underground springs were a source of warmth. Although they look fat, dugongs have a thin layer of subcutaneous fat, and when the temperature drops, they cannot protect their internal organs, and if the water temperature is below 20 degrees Celsius, they will not survive, so they will seek warm spring water in winter.
Dugong mom and its baby
Dugongs, which are solitary on weekdays, have to travel countless kilometers through swamps in winter, huddled together to resist the cold in the oasis created by hot springs. The dugong mother and its cubs are close together. Dugong babies are only six months old and still need to drink milk, and the mother feeds them with long nipples that grow on the pectoral fins. The little dugong would live with his mother for five years until he learned the skills to survive alone.
The warm underground springs attract hundreds of dugongs every day, and there are so many creatures that need to eat, and food is already severely scarce and insufficient. Dugongs are on the verge of starvation, but surrounded by cold currents, and they have nowhere to go. They are eating everything they can eat at this time, whether it is seaweed or aquatic weeds that they do not like to eat. After weeks of this, dugong mothers are no longer able to provide enough milk to support their children.
Mom had no choice but to risk freezing to death in search of food. If the dugong mother chooses the wrong timing, it and its cubs will freeze to death, but it acts decisively. Something appeared in the distance ahead, and it seemed to be another dugong, and the dugong mother wanted to find out. But then a vortex appeared, which meant it wasn't a dugong. Dugong mother and son encounter uninvited guests, and they alarm a large crocodile 3 meters long.
In the face of the crocodile killer, does the dugong mother immediately turn around and run away, or continue to move forward?
Fortunately, these cold-blooded reptiles were also frozen and stiff, unable to open their mouths and swallow the small dugong. The dugong mother continued to move forward, and it finally found a warm stream of water.
As the icy chill receded, hundreds of dugongs followed their mother dugongs to the new district, the first time in nearly a month that they had tasted fresh, tender grass. And just to keep their bodies warm, dugongs eat more than 45 kilograms of aquatic weeds a day.
Overeating in dugongs can lead to flatulence, so there are often some bubbles around, like bubbling in a digester. After spending the winter near the hot springs, the dugongs return to their beloved homeland on their own, a dark and mysterious coast of mangroves.
There are also 3,000 dugongs in Florida Bay, one of the last surviving dugong tribes in the world. But a decade ago, when the long-standing tranquility was gone, Florida's dugongs began to fear. Because they are mammals, they get air on the surface of the sea, but dugongs only show their nostrils when they breathe, and it is difficult to detect, so motor-driven speedboats and jet skis hurt many dugongs every year. More than 90% of dugongs were scaled by propeller blows.
Dugongs were injured as they surfaced to breathe
After the dugong mother was hit once, twice, or even three times, why did she learn not to dodge? If you want to take it for granted that these animals don't have a high IQ and are unresponsive, you're dead wrong. But in fact, this animal is very clever, it is very dexterous and cunning, and the dugong mother only likes to make herself happy, and when it decides to start working, it will be ready to start. Unfortunately, the animals' hearing can receive high-frequency sound waves, but the problem is that the speedboat releases low-frequency sound waves, and the dugong cannot hear the ship approaching in order to flash away early. Thus, the dugongs remain silent in a quiet world, living their usual lives with self-care, foraging peacefully, in almost consistent steps.
Dugong mothers' children like to play tricks, and if it is human, it may be a juvenile offender; Moreover, they are very curious animals, and whenever something enters the water, they will run to see what is going on and take another bite – so that the tragedy of injury is inevitable. Many dugongs are injured as a result, often fatally or result in lifelong disabilities.
Curious and playful dugong
Scientific research confirms that there are many emotional factors behind dugong behavior. Watching them frolick and play, it feels as if the more you understand their ideas, the more you are actually entertaining. But how long can they last? Every day, human development takes up a little of their habitat, and soon they may have no place to live.
Near the lagoon of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the environment is very suitable for the growth of plants. A kind of seaweed that looks like a seaweed is actually an aquatic weed close to a lotus flower, which grows luxuriantly along the coast of the continent. On the vast meadows under the clear water around the island, hundreds of dugongs gathered.
Dugongs, while calm and curious, also actively interact with divers. But the appearance of divers is not popular. Here, dugongs are completely different from what people think, all books say that they are extremely gentle animals, and here the dugong behaves roughly, swimming around the diver, and it even crashes into the people around it, crashing into the back of the guest with its half-ton body. But in fact it is protecting the territory, warning the intruders to leave; The tourists were not injured, the so-called impact turned out to be just a light touch, it was still very gentle. Dugong just wants to interact with the guests, it is curious and wants to play with the visitors, just like a puppy wants to find someone to play with. It touched the guest again. But the bump-and-go game was too simple, and the dugong became dull. It began to change its gameplay, swimming up and wrapping its pectoral fins around the guest's legs, even removing the guest's fins. This continued to play for a while, and then it wandered away bored.
Fourth, the cause of the functional extinction of dugongs in Chinese waters
Dugongs, once numerous, are now on the verge of extinction. Despite their large size and likable marine life, they struggle to live in peace with humans, occasionally caught in fishing nets or shark-resistant protective nets, and even poached.
When the habitat changes, dugongs are affected by many unfavorable factors, and they are quite popular because of their gentle personality and friendly appearance. But this is not an advantage for dugongs, as tourists often disturb them. Much of the fate of dugongs and many other creatures is tied to the brief passing of passengers who pass by by ferry, who are barely aware of the lethal impact they have on these creatures.
The docile dugong faces many dangers, in addition to the destruction of its habitat, its number one enemy is pollution, villas and apartment buildings by the sea, polluting the dugong's drinking water source, and increasing the number of ship accidents.
In addition, dugongs are easily shot by harpoons. Although they are already protected, poachers will still hunt them down at the first opportunity. Legend has it that primitive hunters coveted them because they tasted so delicious that they resembled fine beef, and dugongs were frequently hunted.
Dugongs will return to Chinese waters
Dugongs are endangered for their own reasons. The accumulation of its population numbers is a very slow process, and the female dugong is born every 3 to 7 years before a baby beast is born; A juvenile may not begin to breed until it is 17 years old. These combined factors have led to a decline in the number of dugongs in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef, which was halved a decade ago. In the entire Great Barrier Reef region, only 11,000 dugongs remain – the largest number in the world. #Mermaid Prototype Extinction in China ##外媒: Dugong Declared Functionally Extinct in China ##儒艮 #
In addition, in the Bazaruto Islands off the coast of Mozambique, a small group of dugongs survives and breeds here.
Finally, although dugongs have become functionally extinct in Chinese waters, they are very different from the extinctions of white-tipped dolphins and South China tigers — if the mermaids are well protected in the Americas and Australia, they may still return to the land of Shenzhou if the environment in China's waters is better.