Ecology and behavior of the Ecology and behavior of the Manatee (Trichechus manatus) in Florida ecologybehavioro00hart Year: 1979 112 Spec. Publ. Amer. Soc. Mamm. 3 Fig. 38. Cow suckling yearling calf (photo by James A. Sugar, (c) National Geographic Society). by offspring. As they mature, however, calves become less depen- dent on their mothers for milk and increasingly turn their atten- tion to grazing. In six hours of continuous observation I saw one yearling nurse only three times at intervals of 96 and 132 minutes. Sometimes yearlings go even longer without feeding, then, as if to comp
Ecology and behavior of the Ecology and behavior of the Manatee (Trichechus manatus) in Florida ecologybehavioro00hart Year: 1979 112 Spec. Publ. Amer. Soc. Mamm. 3 Fig. 38. Cow suckling yearling calf (photo by James A. Sugar, (c) National Geographic Society). by offspring. As they mature, however, calves become less depen- dent on their mothers for milk and increasingly turn their atten- tion to grazing. In six hours of continuous observation I saw one yearling nurse only three times at intervals of 96 and 132 minutes. Sometimes yearlings go even longer without feeding, then, as if to compensate, suckle and graze several times within a few minutes. In the space of five and a half hours a yearling male devoted eight and a half minutes to suckling and 17 minutes to grazing, inter- spersing the two activities at intervals of 262, 14, 6, 11, and four minutes. It appears that sirenian calves begin to nibble on vegetation at an early age. According to Heinsohn (1972), young dugongs start grazing by three months of age. Kenchington (1972) found the stomach of a newborn dugong calf distended with seagrasses. Moore (1957) recorded a 38-day-old captive manatee feeding on lettuce. The youngest calf observed at Crystal River, known to be no more than three months of age, was both nursing and grazing when first encountered.
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