In an Instagram video posted today by St. Petersburg-based See Through Canoe Company, a manatee can be seen performing a tremendously impressive bubbler for some lucky paddler.
“Manatees fart to control their buoyancy,” said the company in the post. “The smell is like rotten cabbage and sulfur.”
Indeed, it’s true.
Manatees need to fart, especially since adults can eat up to 100-150 pounds of vegetation per day. The extra gassed is then stored in a little pouches inside their intestines, and then released whenever they need to swim to deeper depths.
So, in other words, they’re basically little fart-powered submarines.
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This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2022.