Save the manatees! They’re yummy cold for lunch, you know

aww...

 Manatees are cool. They’re like marine cows, all relaxed and mellow drifting through the warm tropical waters of 4 or 5 different continents, munching on some seaweed and taking lots of naps. They don’t have much in the way of natural enemies, and they’re like elephants in that way –  they’re probably yummy to the local carnivores, but they’re just too damn big and often too far away to eat. So they don’t get eaten, mostly, they just keep on floating along, munching their salads and looking kind of squishy.

In many places, notably in Brazil and Florida, there are rules against killing or maiming manatees. The poaching trade does exist, but the biggest problems are pollution and boat strikes. Because manatees are cute and mellow and really inoffensive, we feel all guilty for killing them. Awesome.

Next to the Please Don’t Kill The Manatees booth is the Manatee Re-Population Party, a whole clutch of organizations determined to reverse the trends of the last couple of decades and make the manatee population grow. Awesome. Manatees are cool. More manatees probably wouldn’t suck too much.

I want you to think about something now. Manatees come in a couple of different flavors the world over, and live in several different locations. In each case, they exist in small populations. There aren’t many manatees alive right now, but as far as I can tell, there never were that many manatees at any given time alive. It’s not like the mighty buffalo that used to stampede in the millions, great manatee drives pounding through the Florida Everglades, just some, hanging out in the shallows.

So, if we can stop people from liquefying manatees with their boat propellers and get the manatee population growing again (a noble cause I don’t have a lot of faith in), nobody can tell me just how many manatees there should be. How many manatees is enough?