Welcome to You Ask Andy

Martin Zipkin, age 12, of New Hyde Par , N.Y., for his question:

 What is a dugong?

The dugong is a distant relative of the manatee and the sea cow. The dugong has been known since Bible days. The seacow was discovered in 1741 and the last of the big gentle creatures perished in 1766. In 25 years, man hunted it out of existence. There are a few manatees browsing among the waterweeds of our southern rivers and bayous. But the dugong is not found near our shores and probably never was.

He enjoys life around Australia, in the back waters of the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Solomon and the Marshall Islands. The big fat fellow loves warm water rich with juicy water weeds.

Though he has a gentle nature, the dugong is no beauty. In the water he resembles a bloated mattress covered with greyish leather. Fully grown, he is about nine feet long. The massive head tapers back to a slender tail. There are two front flippers used for swimming. Mamma Dugong also uses her flippers to cuddle her baby.

The dugong has no hind flippers. But he has a most amazing tail. Its two sides spread out to form a horizontal rudder, like the tail of a whale.

The dugong’s face is often set in folds of skin and blubber. Its mouth is large and so are his nostrils but his eyes are small. His face may be ornamented with a few bristles though the rest of his leathery skin is usually bare. Papa Dugong wears a pair of long yellow tusks, Mamma Dugong has no tusks.

Can you imagine anything less like a beautiful mermaid? Yet the dugong gave rise to the legend of the mermaid. Sailors caught only glimpses of the big fellow idling in warm coastal waters. When people do not know the full facts they tend to make up an imaginary story. So it was with the dugong. The sailors saw only half of him and invented the other half. True, the mermaid is more beautiful than tile dugong. But the dugong is real and she is not.

Mermaid stories go back to ancient times. The story of Ulysses says that he was tempted by the siren song of mermaids. Do the experts who studied and classified the dugong believe that old sailors yarn? Well, they could not really have believed it. But when it came to naming the dugong family of animals, they certainly remembered it. For the order to which the manatees and dugongs belong is Sirenians‑ the sirens.

The sirens, or Sirenians as the experts call them, are water dwelling mammals. They are warm blooded, air breathing animals whose babies are born alive. Mama Dugong has but one baby at a time and she is a very loving mother. She feeds him on mothers milk, plays with hire and cradles him in her flippers.

It is not likely that a dugong ever leaves the water. For he is too heavy and helpless on land. But he must breathe air. He feeds under water but comes up for air every five or ten minutes. His nostrils open only in the air and close like valves when he submerges. The dugong either cannot or will not breathe through his mouth ‑ and he certainly cannot sing like the imaginary siren for whom his order is named.

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