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Below the waves
- They are often referred to as “sea cows” because of their grazing habit below the waves. Dugongs live in very shallow, temperate water where seagrass flourishes, and they need to eat plenty of it to stay healthy. These animals tend to graze 24 hours a day, ferreting out seagrass with their snouts.
www.americanoceans.org/species/dugong/Dugong - Facts, Diet & Habitat Information - American Oceans
This behavior is known as cultivation grazing and favors the rapidly growing, higher nutrient seagrasses that dugongs prefer. [95] Dugongs may also prefer to feed on younger, less fibrous strands of seagrasses, [ 96 ] and cycles of cultivation feeding at different seagrass meadows may provide them with a greater number of younger plants.
Dugongs live in very shallow, temperate water where seagrass flourishes, and they need to eat plenty of it to stay healthy. These animals tend to graze 24 hours a day, ferreting out seagrass with their snouts.
Dugongs graze on underwater grasses day and night, rooting for them with their bristled, sensitive snouts and chomping them with their rough lips.
6 days ago · dugong, (Dugong dugon), marine mammal that inhabits the warm coastal waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, feeds on seagrasses, and is similar to the manatee.
Aug 21, 2020 · The dugong is a marine mammal that spends its time grazing on seagrass in shallow coastal waters. A close relative of manatees, it is the only remaining member of the Dugongidae family. Often dubbed ‘sea cows’, dugongs are the only marine mammal that eats virtually only plants.
- Shawn Laidlaw
- Sirenia
- Mammalia
- Chordata
Dugongs are primarily herbivorous, grazing on up to 30kg of seagrass a day. They eat both day and night, locating their food with the help of coarse, sensitive bristles on their upper lip. These large creatures are found in warm water around coastlines, both north and south of the equator.
Dugongs use their flexible upper lip to rip up entire seagrass plants. If the entire plant cannot be uprooted, they rip off leaves. Their grazing leaves distinctive furrows in the seagrass beds that can be detected from the surface.
