The edibility of manatees...yeah...

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-12 12:04pm

I was wondering...pondering...contemplating...what if we replace beef with manatee-meat? It doesn't even have to be a manatee, it could be some sort of seal, or sealion or whale thing, an aquatic mammal. Imagine, huge-ass vats with overfattened lard tubs floating along in 'em. And because they're floating along, the meat-to-bone ratio can get really disproportionate and we can cram a shitload of 'em in an aquarium. Yeah, a weird idea, huh?

Anyway, how good a food would manatees (or whatever aquatic mammal you have) make?

And would it be possible to do to 'em what we do to cows? How feasible is it?

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2005-04-12 12:43pm

Sea cows!

We already ranch 'em off the coast of Texas. Ain't seen nothin' till you seen a herd of sea cows being driven along by cowboys ridin' dolphins. We do rodeos where we lasso 'em up, hogtie 'em just as pretty as you please.

Taste great, with a bit of A-1. Little more blubbesome than I prefer, though.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2005-04-12 03:00pm

Petrosjko wrote:Sea cows!

We already ranch 'em off the coast of Texas. Ain't seen nothin' till you seen a herd of sea cows being driven along by cowboys ridin' dolphins. We do rodeos where we lasso 'em up, hogtie 'em just as pretty as you please.

Taste great, with a bit of A-1. Little more blubbesome than I prefer, though.

OK, while this thread seems silly, callous, and...Odd...
The Mental image of hundreds of Cowboys riding Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, driving a herd of SeaCows made me spew with laughter.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-12 03:04pm

Petrosjko wrote:Sea cows!

We already ranch 'em off the coast of Texas. Ain't seen nothin' till you seen a herd of sea cows being driven along by cowboys ridin' dolphins. We do rodeos where we lasso 'em up, hogtie 'em just as pretty as you please.

Taste great, with a bit of A-1. Little more blubbesome than I prefer, though.

But you're not shitting me about the manatees tasting great, right?

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-04-12 03:17pm

Crossroads Inc. wrote:OK, while this thread seems silly, callous, and...Odd...
The Mental image of hundreds of Cowboys riding Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, driving a herd of SeaCows made me spew with laughter.

How is eating sea cows callous?

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-12 04:40pm

What's a callous?

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2005-04-12 04:41pm

type of person. cold, heartless, callous.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-04-12 07:12pm

Inuit Eskimos have eaten walruses for thousands of years. Also, some Pacific Northwest Indians hunted down whales from time to time to eat their flesh, and whale meat is still a delicacy in Japan. I don't think they would taste all that bad, but they'd be extremely difficult to domesticate because of the whole "live in water" thing.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2005-04-12 07:51pm

Though it would certainly put an end to their status as endangered animals, since domestication kind of means having a fair few of said animals...

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2005-04-12 08:48pm

Isn't their reproductive cycle not suited for this?

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2005-04-12 08:53pm

Catholics along the Gulf of Mexico used to pretend that manatees were fish so they could eat meat on Fridays and during Lent. If the meat wasn't any good, they'd probably have stuck to fish. The Steller's sea cows were hunted to extinction. And hell, they're called sea cows. They eat plants, and they're meaty. They probably quite palatable.

However, considering how slow their reproduction rate is, I doubt it'd be feasible.

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2005-04-12 08:55pm

Maybe we could clone them, would it be faster?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-04-13 12:02am

Cpl Kendall wrote:Maybe we could clone them, would it be faster?

Cloning doesn't work that way. The critter still has to grow up the old fashioned way, but it would help remove the need to keep males alive, so we could eat as many as we wanted of those.

Queeb Salaron · Post by **Queeb Salaron** » 2005-04-13 01:30am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I was wondering...pondering...contemplating...what if we replace beef with manatee-meat?

PETA's collective brain forms a blood clot, and they all go into seizures.

Count me in. ::Dons aquatic cowboy boots::

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2005-04-13 02:18am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:
Petrosjko wrote:Sea cows!

We already ranch 'em off the coast of Texas. Ain't seen nothin' till you seen a herd of sea cows being driven along by cowboys ridin' dolphins. We do rodeos where we lasso 'em up, hogtie 'em just as pretty as you please.

Taste great, with a bit of A-1. Little more blubbesome than I prefer, though.

But you're not shitting me about the manatees tasting great, right?

Meant every word I said, m'boy, for I am honest as the day is long. Seen it with my own eyes, I have...

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-13 04:34am

Petrosjko wrote: But you're not shitting me about the manatees tasting great, right?

Meant every word I said, m'boy, for I am honest as the day is long. Seen it with my own eyes, I have...[/quote]

You sound like a senile old man

Alright, if, somehow, our manatees get their libido, their mojo, back and start humping and humping and making babies as fast as cows, would it be profitable to switch from cows to manatees? To have gigantic underwater pens and aquarium enclosures and all that?

And this gives me another idea...

What about hippos? Aside from the fact that they can gore you to death with their two-foot long tusks, how foodable would they be?

Post by **Broomstick** » 2005-04-13 05:51am

Steller's Sea Cow was called "sea cow" at least in part because they supposedly tasted like beef. We'll never know personally because they were all eaten and no longer exit. Oops.

No question that seals, etc. are quite edible.

While initially pinniped type critters (seals, walruses, sea lions, etc) and mannatees would seem to be suited to domestication - used to congregating in herds and so forth - they aren't really. Aside from the need for water to keep 'em happy and healthy, the propensity of the males to fight, and the fact that both genders can be quite agressive towards humans they are not, like our other herd animals, herbivores. They're carnivores. That means in order to feed them we have to catch/raise other creatures, creatures that we can eat ourselves without having to go through the bother of dealing with big, potentially dangerous animals.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-04-13 05:53am

Wait...I thought manatees were herbivores

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2005-04-13 09:25am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Wait...I thought manatees were herbivores

They are they eat stuff like sea grass, but Seals, Walrus and Seal Lions eat fish.

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2005-04-13 12:29pm

Y'know, I gotta admit that I never had much sympathy for manatees. Big, dumb, lumbering beasties. Sea cows sums them up beautifully.

Now, there are plenty of species out there that I'd rather not see go extinct- various varieties of shark, wolves, the big whales even.

But sea cows?

Pah.

xcr · Post by **xcr** » 2005-04-13 01:43pm

I don't want any animal to go extinct. All that variety of potential food, gone...

Post by **Broomstick** » 2005-04-13 07:02pm

Mannatees are big, dumb, and non-threatening. When I was at Sea World in Florida I asked one of the keepers what they ate and she said in captivity they're usually fed things like lettuce.

By the way - mannatees are freshwater critters, brackish at most. They don't do well in the ocean, which is why for the most part they aren't found their. Florida's abundance of fresh waterways make a good habitat for them - aside from powerboats, humans, and other hazards.

Mannatees might or might not taste good, but the breed very slowly. Too slowly for them to supply steady meat in any significant amount to current populations.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-04-13 07:22pm

Shroom Man 777 wrote: And this gives me another idea...

What about hippos? Aside from the fact that they can gore you to death with their two-foot long tusks, how foodable would they be?

Damn, the only way to keep yourself safe from a hippo is to carry a military rifle and be a good 100 yards away. Yes, hippos would certainly be problematic, and probably not worth the space. You can't really keep males together in a small enclosure, and babies are liable to get trampled by the huge individuals. Hippos in the wild rule the rivers; they have all the space they want. It wouldn't be cost efficient for farmers to be buying that much river-space. The best option would be just to kill them in the wild, as an occassional treat. In captivity, you'd need tons of space to keep them happy.

Surprisingly though, they'd have a quite low fat percentage. After all, they sink, and have only 2 inches of fat (not much when you weigh up to 7000 lbs). In comparison, the 1500 lbs polar bear also has 2 in of fat. Much higher adipose percentage. Also, they only consume about 80 lbs of grass a night (not marijuana, you sickos

). That's because they're so inactive.

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-04-13 10:28pm

For Hippo ranching you need a vehicle similer to an Amphibious Tank (a big one like those feilded durring WW-2 by the Japanese) with a bulldozer scoop.

Zor

General Brock · Post by **General Brock** » 2005-04-16 03:29am

I suppose you could use growth hormones like they do with cows to speed up their growth, or grow a really, really big sea cow. Really, though, I don't see this as being profitable unless you can sell it to Asian restaurants as a rare Western delicacy. Most people will look at a manatee, and not want to eat it. [Insert grossed-out emoticon here]

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The edibility of manatees...yeah...

The edibility of manatees...yeah...

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