Manatee Cousins in Mideast Face Uncertain Future

From Treehugger:

A dugong in an aquarium in Sydney, Australia. Photo by jo3hug via Flickr.

It must have required many lonely months out to sea to mistake this face only a mother could love for that of a fair maiden, but encounters with dugongs are indeed said to have been the inspiration for the myth of the mermaid. While the fictional fish-human hybrids were believed to have "called sailors to their death by encouraging them to jump overboard from their ships," Green Prophet reports that it's humans who are threatening their real-life counterparts with extinction.

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