Lecture 3/4 Flashcards
Sirenians are most closely related to what two animals?
(Elephants and hyraxes)
What are the two subspecies of the West Indian manatee?
(Florida and Antillean manatees)
What species of manatee would you find near Australia and New Zealand?
(Dugong)
What type of bones do manatees have?
(Pachyostotic → long bones do not have a marrow cavity; predisposes to fractures)
Why are manatees predisposed to thoracic trauma which can disrupt their normal orientation in water?
(Because their lungs lie within the dorsal portion of their body with the diaphragm running horizontally below)
Manatees are prone to cold/heat (choose) stress.
(Cold, low metabolic rate so unable to generate as much body heat to combat cold, will migrate to warmer areas in the winter)
What is the food transit rate in manatees?
(1 week)
(T/F) Manatee hair is sensory, not insulatory.
(T)
(T/F) It is abnormal for manatees to have vessels in the cornea of their eye.
(F, it is normal)
Manatees are herbivorous/omnivorous/carnivorous (choose).
(Herbivorous)
Of the three main nutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrates), which is minimal in manatee milk?
(Carbohydrates, contains more fat and protein compared with the milk of other mammals, contains little to no lactose)
Manatees are prone to chronic abscessation that is not necessarily secondary to trauma and is usually treated with surgical drainage and daily flushing, what is the most commonly found causative agent?
(Staph aureus)
What is the normal nursing behavior of a manatee calf?
(Nurse for 3-5 minutes every 1-2 hours all day, every day)
What are the seven different species of sea turtles?
(Kemp’s ridley, Olive ridley, loggerhead, leatherback, green, hawksbill, and flatback)
What are the terms for the ventral and dorsal bony shells of sea turtles?
(Dorsal is the plastron and ventral is the carapace)
Instead of teeth, what do sea turtles have?
(Ramphothecae, crushing jaws with keratinized sheaths)
Do warmers or cooler egg temperatures produce female sea turtle hatchlings?
(Warmer is female, cooler is male)
Why are leatherback sea turtles able to traverse colder seas when compared to other species of sea turtles?
(They use gigantothermy which is the enhanced ability to retain body heat as an individual’s surface area to volume ratio decreases, they have this ability because they are mesotherms)
How do turtle’s manage their salt intake? Two answers.
(Have well developed lacrimal/salt glands that excrete salts and squeeze the salt from their ingested food with their muscular esophagus)
(T/F) All of the sea turtle species are either threatened or endangered.
(T)
What is indicated when a sea turtle has excessive epibiota?
(They likely have a chronic disease that has caused longer periods of reduced activity, allowing the turtle to become a ready host for barnacles and lots of other creatures)
