Bart Bear's Blog

We went to the Aquarium while we were in Sydney, to see the new Dugong exhibit. Dugongs are mammals and although they live in the water, they have to keep coming up to breathe. They live in the northern seas around Australia. They were hunted for food for centuries and now they are fairly rare, so there is a plan to breed some in zoos and aquariums. Dugongs are harmless critters. They spend almost all of their time eating sea grass. That's one of the reasons that they are also called Sea Cows, because cows spend most of their time eating land grass. Old-time sailors thought that dugongs were mermaids. Dad says that the sailors must have been at sea too long. I think that dugongs are cute, just like ordinary cows, and I watched them for ages just feeding, going up for air, taking a swim around their huge tank and coming back for more food. The other fish in their tank seem to like them too, maybe because they leave a stream of chomped-up sea grass behind them as they swim.

Labels: animals, New South Wales, Sydney