Manatees Are So Weird

I learned a lot about manatees while writing this story on how often animals, like the manatee, are considered for down- or de-listing from the United States’ endangered species list. Lo:

1/ Manatees have nails on their flippers, a vestige from their evolutionary ancestors, which were land animals.

2/ Manatees’ closest relatives are elephants and hyrax. This means that while there is no standard emoji for manatees, I consider it scientifically accurate to represent them as 🌊🐘s.

2a/ This is a hyrax:

3/ The Tampa Bay Times, winner of 12 Pulitzer Prizes, once described manatees as “big as a couch and shaped like a yam with flippers,” which is how I shall forever remember them.