40 Fun Facts About Dugong

Which land animals are dugongs more closely related to than they are to whales or seals?

Elephants share an ancient ancestor with dugongs and manatees, a family tie that also takes in the small, furry hyraxes.

Sailors' sightings of dugongs are often said to have inspired which legendary sea creatures?

Mermaids are often said to be inspired by dugongs, and one Malay name for the animal means woman of the sea.

A manatee has a paddle-shaped tail, but a dugong's tail looks like that of which animal?

A dolphin has the same notched, fluked tail as a dugong, which sweeps it up and down in long strokes to cruise at about 10 km/h.

How do dugongs sometimes rest in shallow water with their heads above the surface to breathe?

Standing on their tails lets dugongs breathe with their heads out of the water; they usually come up every couple of minutes but can hold a breath for six.

How do feeding dugongs get around a seagrass meadow, instead of swimming as they do in open water?

Dugongs walk on their flippers as they graze, and those paddle-like forelimbs make up only about 15% of the animal's body length.

What do male dugongs grow at puberty that shows females they have reached breeding age?

Tusks erupt in male dugongs when testosterone rises at puberty, and the growth layers inside them let scientists work out an animal's age.

What does a dugong mother do as soon as her calf is born in very shallow water?

A dugong mother pushes it up for air straight away, and the newborn, already about 1.2 metres long, then stays close to her side.

Adult dugongs have few natural enemies, yet one was recorded dying after a strike from which animal?

A stingray barb impaled the dugong and it died of the trauma; crocodiles and killer whales are the more usual threats, mostly to the young.

In 2022, a study declared the dugong functionally extinct in the coastal waters of which country?

China had no confirmed dugong record after 2008, and an interview survey across four southern provinces led scientists to call the animal functionally extinct there.

A dugong's ribs are among the densest bones of any animal; what are they thought to do in the water?

The heavy bones are thought to act as ballast, holding a dugong just below the surface; they are so solid that they contain little or no marrow.

Dugongs breathe through nostrils on top of the head; what seals those nostrils during a dive?

Valves close the nostrils as a dugong goes under, and its unusually long lungs stretch almost as far back as the kidneys.

A dugong calf is born which colour before its skin darkens to brownish or dark grey with age?

Pale cream is the colour of a newborn dugong's thick, smooth skin, which darkens along the back and sides as the animal grows older.

A dugong's snout bends sharply downward as an adaptation for which everyday activity?

Feeding on the seabed is what the downturned snout is built for; manatees, the dugong's closest living cousins, have noticeably shorter snouts.

With very small eyes and poor sight, dugongs often rely on which sense to find edible plants?

Smell guides dugongs to edible plants, and the long, sensitive bristles around the mouth then help them feel their way through a meadow.

What do dugongs do with a seagrass plant they have dug up before they eat it?

Dugongs shake off the sand from each uprooted plant, roots and all, and have been known to gather a pile of plants before starting to eat.

What telltale marks do feeding dugongs leave across the floor of a seagrass meadow?

Long furrows in the sand trace each dugong's path through a meadow, and such feeding trails have been seen as deep as 33 metres.

Which horseshoe-shaped part of a dugong's face works as a muscular tool for digging up plants?

The upper lip of a dugong forms a highly mobile muzzle, and the short hairs clustered around it are thought to help the animal sense its surroundings by touch.

Which term describes dugong feeding that clears space for the fast-growing seagrasses they prefer?

Cultivation grazing works a little like gardening: quick-growing plants that are low in fibre and rich in nitrogen fill the open space dugongs leave behind.

What can grow on a dugong's skin and change the colour that the animal appears?

Algae growing on the skin can tint a dugong, an animal that will also eat the stuff when its favourite plants are scarce.

Dugongs communicate underwater with chirps, whistles and which sound more often linked with dogs?

Barks are among the dugong's calls and are used in aggressive behaviour, a useful signal for an animal whose eyesight is poor.

Which term describes male dugongs defending small territories where they display to females?

Lekking is known from some dugong populations; in others, many males instead compete to mate with a single female.

Dugongs are social animals, so why are they usually found alone or in pairs?

Meadows cannot feed large herds for long, so gatherings of hundreds of dugongs do happen but break up after a short time.

Dugongs and manatees, the only fully aquatic plant-eating mammals, make up which scientific order?

Sirenia takes its name from the sirens of Greek myth and has just four living species: the dugong and three manatees.

Steller's sea cow, the dugong's extinct closest relative, lived around islands in which sea?

The Bering Sea was the giant's last refuge, around the Commander Islands, and hunters wiped it out within 27 years of its discovery by Europeans.

The dugong became the first marine animal to be protected by law in which island country?

The Philippines once had sizeable dugong herds around all its islands, but numbers fell sharply from the 1970s as animals drowned in fishing gear.

The dugong is a national animal of which neighbour of Australia that bans non-traditional hunting?

Papua New Guinea counts the dugong among its national animals, and dugong meat and ornaments carved from its bones are prized at feasts there.

How does the IUCN Red List classify the dugong, a slow breeder whose numbers are falling?

Vulnerable is the dugong's global rating; a female may wait several years between calves, so even small losses are hard to replace.

Plans for a US military base at Henoko threatened the last few dugongs of which Japanese island?

Okinawa was thought to have as few as three dugongs left, and some islanders took their fight against the base to US courts.

After Australia, which body of water holds the world's second-largest dugong population?

The Persian Gulf is home to several thousand dugongs, and a single gathering of more than 600 was once sighted west of Qatar.

A young dugong stays near its mother for about 18 months and sometimes hitches a ride where?

On her back is where a calf sometimes rides, and although it starts eating seagrass soon after birth it keeps nursing for more than a year.

Dugongs are slow breeders with long lives; roughly how long can one live in the wild?

About 70 years is within a dugong's reach, and the oldest animal on record lived to 73.

Which World Heritage bay in Western Australia shelters a stable population of about 10,000 dugongs?

Shark Bay has one of the largest seagrass beds in the world, more than 4,000 square kilometres of meadow, enough to feed dugongs in their thousands.

Which waterway around Thursday Island is home to one of the world's largest dugong populations?

The Torres Strait lies between Australia and New Guinea, and dugong meat and oil are among the most valued traditional foods of its Islander people.

Mediterranean dugongs, now gone, are thought to have shared ancestry with those of which sea?

The Red Sea still holds dugongs in the hundreds, while the Mediterranean animals may have lasted until after the first civilisations arose on its shores.

The largest dugong on record, over four metres long and about a tonne, was found off which country?

India is where the giant turned up, off the Saurashtra coast; most adult dugongs stay under three metres, and females tend to be the larger sex.

Around the Gulf of Kutch, dugong oil was traditionally prized as a preservative for which objects?

Wooden boats were conditioned with the oil, one of many uses for an animal also hunted over thousands of years for its meat, skin and bones.

Besides sea cow and sea pig, which other animal lends its name to a local nickname for the dugong?

Camel is the surprise: sea camel sits beside sea cow and sea pig among the dugong's local names, though the animal is related to none of the three.

Bazaruto Island, home to perhaps East Africa's last viable dugong herd, belongs to which country?

Mozambique has had laws protecting dugongs since 1955, yet they have not been effectively enforced, and most of the country's other herds are now very small.

Dugongs are almost entirely plant-eaters, but which of these animals will they occasionally eat?

Jellyfish, sea squirts and shellfish are all eaten now and then, and dugongs in cooler southern Australian waters seem to seek out such prey.

Which island nation marks the eastern edge of the dugong's range across the western Pacific?

Vanuatu has the easternmost dugongs, and although the animals are hunted elsewhere in the region, killing one is taboo in parts of the country.