Joe Berthelsen, age 8, of Sioux City,. Iowa, for his question:

Where are any manatees left in the world?

Nowadays we worry about what is happening to the wild animals that share our world. We hear that many of them are in danger from pollution. Others are crowded out as people multiply and take over the wild places. All this is true, but the picture is not all grim. People are good at solving serious problems. If we all try hard for a long time, we can save most of our wild animals. What's more, the matsatee and many other animals are not in any real trouble at present.

The manatee is a big, fat lazy fellow with a few big, fat lazy cousins. All of them enjoy life in warm water near the shores. They like the mouths of rivers and other places where the shallow water is clogged with floating weeds. After all, a mother manatee needs about 100 pounds of green food every day. And the lazy lady prefers to loll in the water, where she can eat without going to any trouble.

All these cousins look like huge, pear shaped balloons with large, fishy shaped tails. Their arms are flippers and they have no back begs. Their faces look somewhat like piles of inner tubes, adorned with bright little buttons for eyes and moustaches made from straggly bristles. They wear muddy greys to match the murky water.

Some of the cousins are called "dugongs" and most of these are about ten feet long. There are dugongs along the shores of the Red Sea and more in the shallow coves around the Indian Ocean. Others enjoy life in the mouths of East Africa rivers. Still more live along the marshy shores of Taiwan and the Solomon Islands    and others live far away along the eastern shores of Australia.

In some places, these manatee cousins are hunted for their meat. This is easy, because the dugongs are trustful characters and they do not try very hard to escape. They do not multiply very fast because Mrs. Dugong has only one baby at a time. Around the shores of Africa, too many of them have been caught and eaten. So there are fewer dugongs left.

The largest of the cousins is a real manatee, and he grows to be 15 feet long. Many of these whoppers live in the marshy waters around Florida. There, almost nobody bothers them. But some get injured by speed boats. At present, they are not in serious danger. Other manatees live down in South America. They often wander from the shores up the weedy rivers, where some of them get captured and eaten. Another branch of the family lives around the islands of the Caribbean.

Let's not mistake the manatee for a fish just because he lives in the water. Actually, he is a warm blooded, air breathing mammal. He can stay under water about four minutes. Then he must come up for a breath of air. Mrs. Florida Manatee has one or two babies that weigh about 50 pounds apiece. They feed on mother's milk for a year and a half. Then they go off to dine on the floating weeds.