Dugongs: Reading answers

Dugongs Dugongs are herbivorous mammals that spend their entire lives in the sea. Their close relatives the manatees also venture into or live in freshwater. Together dugongs and manatees makeup the order Sirenia or sea cows, so-named because dugongs and manatees are thought to have given rise to the myth of the mermaids or sirens of the sea. The dugong, which is a large marine mammal which, together with the manatees, looks rather like a cross between a rotund dolphin and a walrus. Its body, flippers and fluke resemble those of a dolphin but it has no dorsal fin. Its head looks somewhat like that of a walrus without the long tusks. Dugongs, along with other Sirenians whose diet consists…