Food preference of the amazonian manatee in captivity

Resumo

Studies on one endangered species´ feeding contribute to the more complex knowledge about its ecology, as also its preservation and/or management. By this means, aiming to obtain one better development and food supply for the animals kept in captivity in the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisa da Amazônia, one experiment was conducted to verify their food preferences. Aiming to observe the Amazonian manatee´s feeding behavior, eight animals were used kept inside one pool with 28,26 m2 and 1,0 m deep. Each animal was identified with colored ribbons and weighed at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. Simultaneously, equal quantities of 11 species of aquatic macrophytes were daily provided. Among the provided items, the animals showed more interest for the emerging plants (57,4% of the time), like the grasses Paspalum repens e Oryza grandiglumis, where differences on choosing the macrophytes due to the age bracket were detected. It was also known that the Amazonian manatees, when fed with plants presenting inlays of microorganisms are getting in your diet a calcium supplementation which content, comparing with the plants of the Central Amazon, are extremely low.