---
title: "West Indian Manatee (Trichechus manatus) | AnimalTracks.wiki"
description: "A gentle sea cow whose dense bones may help keep it neutrally buoyant, and whose weak low-frequency hearing may be part of why boats keep hitting it."
image: "https://animaltracks.wiki/images/animals/manatee-1.webp"
published: "2026-08-31"
updated: "2026-09-17"
---
# West Indian Manatee (*Trichechus manatus*)
> **Status**: Checked against 9 sources, listed under Sources below.
> **Tagline**: A gentle sea cow whose dense bones may help keep it neutrally buoyant, and whose weak low-frequency hearing may be part of why boats keep hitting it.
> **Soundtrack Vibe**: Jazz-Funk, Soul & Lounge Fusion // Grover Washington, Jr. & Bill Withers, "Just the Two of Us"
> **Soundtrack Links**: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/5fdNHVZHbWB1AaXk4RBGVD) | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IO74QV6wHY)
> **Vibe Match**: An unhurried soprano saxophone line that takes long, slow breaths, for a grazer that replaces 90 percent of the air in its lungs with each breath, against a human's 10 percent.
## Biological Superpowers & Stats
- **Taxonomy**: *Trichechus manatus*
- **Danger Level**: Low
- **Conservation Status**: Vulnerable ([IUCN Red List](https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2024-2.rlts.t22103a43792740.en))
- **Superpower**: Marching molars that are constantly replaced, new teeth forming at the back of the jaw and moving forward about a centimeter a month.
- **Habitat**: Shallow coastal waters, slow-moving rivers and estuaries from the southeastern United States through the Caribbean, Central America and northeastern South America, plus the warm springs many manatees rely on in cooler months
- **Diet**: Mainly seagrass, mangrove leaves and algae, grazed for up to eight hours a day
- **Tags**: mammal, ocean, freshwater, herbivore, migratory
## Natural History & Behavior
## Deaf to the Low Notes
A manatee's best hearing sits between roughly 6 and 20 kilohertz. Researchers who tested two adult manatees found that weak hearing at low frequencies may be a contributing factor in why the animals struggle to detect boat noise and avoid collisions. Ninety-six percent of Florida manatees have scars from at least one watercraft collision, and from 1990 through 2021 those collisions were the most prevalent cause of death for Florida manatees, behind 19.1 percent of all documented carcasses.
## Big Bodies, Long Childhoods
A full-grown manatee typically runs 9 to 10 feet long and weighs around 1,000 pounds, though some individuals reach more than 13 feet and weigh as much as 3,500 pounds. A newborn calf weighs just 60 to 70 pounds and stays close to its mother for about two years while she teaches it how to migrate and where the warm water sites are. Manatees may live past 65 years in captivity, but life in the wild is rougher: of the wild manatees that reach adulthood, only about half are expected to survive into their early twenties.
## Grazing, Then Chasing Warm Water
Manatees usually spend up to eight hours a day grazing on seagrass, mangrove leaves and algae, using an upper lip whose two sides move independently to grab plants and draw them into their mouths, the same trick an elephant, a distant relative, pulls off with the tip of its trunk. They range along the coasts and rivers of the southeastern United States, through the Caribbean and Central America, down to Brazil's northeastern Atlantic coast, with a range-wide population estimate of at least 13,000. Temperature is what can undo all that space: Florida manatees, especially young ones, are vulnerable to death from cold stress once the water falls below about 18 to 20°C for long stretches, or drops to 10 to 12°C for even a few days. To survive those spells, almost all of Florida's manatees stay near warm springs and power-plant outflows.
## A Body Built Like a Submarine
A manatee's ribs are solid bone with no marrow (its red blood cells form in its sternum instead), and its lungs run a meter or more along its backbone instead of around its ribcage. That unusually dense skeleton may contribute to a manatee's neutral buoyancy: a body whose density equals the water it swims in. Manatees also wear down their molars on plants that often carry sand, so new teeth grow in at the back of the jaw and shuffle forward about a centimeter a month to replace the ones that fall out the front.
> **A manatee swaps out 90 percent of the air in its lungs with each breath.** Humans manage about 10 percent, and a manatee can hold its breath for as long as 20 minutes.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### How do a manatee's molars keep working through decades of grazing on gritty seagrass?
Manatees have no biting teeth, only grinding molars, and a diet of plants that often carry sand wears those molars down. To keep up, new teeth form at the back of the jaw and shuffle forward about a centimeter a month, eventually pushing the oldest molars out the front. *(Source: [Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission]())*
### Why do so many manatees crowd into Florida's springs and power plants every winter?
Florida manatees, especially young ones, are vulnerable to death from cold stress once the water falls below about 18 to 20°C for long stretches, or to 10 to 12°C for even a few days. Statewide winter counts from 1999 to 2011 put 48.5% of manatees at power-plant outfalls, 17.5% at natural springs and 34.9% at passive thermal basins or sites with no known warm-water feature. Comparing where cold-stress carcasses turned up against where those refuges are, springs appear to offer the best protection. *(Source: [Laist, Taylor & Reynolds 2013]())*
### How does a manatee feel its way through murky water?
Stiff whiskers called vibrissae cover a manatee's entire body, and research suggests they work like a fish's lateral line, a sensory system built to read water movement. In tests, two Florida manatees detected water displacement of less than a millionth of a meter at frequencies from 15 to 150 hertz. Florida manatees have little difficulty in the turbid waterways they live in, which often contain obstacles they have to swim around. *(Source: [Gaspard et al. 2013]())*
### Is the West Indian manatee still listed as endangered in the United States?
No. In 2017 the West Indian manatee, both subspecies included, was reclassified from endangered to threatened. In a proposed rule published on 14 January 2025, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the Florida manatee as threatened and the Antillean manatee as endangered, two listings that would replace the current threatened listing of the species. *(Source: [Federal Register, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2025]())*
## Sources
1. [West Indian Manatee (Trichechus manatus). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Species Profile.]()
2. [Florida Manatee Facts and Information. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.]()
3. [Manatee. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.]()
4. [Trichechus manatus (West Indian Manatee). The Online Guide to the Animals of Trinidad and Tobago, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.]()
5. [Deutsch & Morales-Vela (2024). Trichechus manatus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2024: e.T22103A43792740.]()
6. [Laist, Taylor & Reynolds (2013). Winter Habitat Preferences for Florida Manatees and Vulnerability to Cold. PLoS ONE.]()
7. [Gerstein et al. (1999). The underwater audiogram of the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus). The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.]()
8. [Gaspard et al. (2013). Detection of hydrodynamic stimuli by the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris). Journal of Comparative Physiology A.]()
9. [Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Status for the Florida Manatee and Endangered Status for the Antillean Manatee. Federal Register, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2025.]()
*Published August 31, 2026. Last updated September 17, 2026.*
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