Steller's Sea Cow: Difference between revisions

|name=Steller's Sea Cow

|originalpic=Steller's Sea CowOriginal.png

|name_jp=ステラーカイギュウ

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|appearance=Steller's Sea Cow has cyan-blue eyes, her shoulder-length hair is purplish grey that fades into a dark purple at the end of it. Besides her long tail fin, she has two large flippers right above the ears befitting her species. Her flippers share the same color tone as her hair, getting darker at the end and so does her tail fin.

Her bikini bottom has the same color scheme as the top. A little orange yellow ring is connecting the forth and back. She wears thigh high socks, which share the same features as her gloves: orange-yellow cuffs, greenish gray colored with several white spots and around her feet they fade into a white color. Also, noticeable are the yellow bracelets she wears on her left arm and her right foot.

|reallife=[[File:stellersseacow.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|left|A depiction of the now extinct Steller's Sea Cow.]]

Steller also reported an incident where as one female was being captured, the rest of the group attacked the boat by ramming the sides with their heads. After the hunt, the mate of the captured female followed the boat to shore, even after she had passed.

The indigenous peoples of the Aleutian Islands and St. Lawrence Islands, namely the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleut Aleut people] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Yupik_people Siberian Yupik people] respectively, heavily depended on the Steller's Sea Cow for food and hide. They frequently moved around to be able to hunt the animal. As such, many local populations were [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_extinction extirpated]. By the time Europeans discovered them in the 1740's, it is estimated there may have been only 2,000 individuals left. Records conclude that by 1768, twenty-seven years after the discovery, the Steller's Sea Cow was extinct. However in 1887, zoologist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Hess_Stejneger Leonhard Hess Stejneger] determined there had been fewer than 1,500 individuals remaining at the time of Steller's discovery, and argued there was already an immediate danger of the sea cow's extinction.

Evidence suggests Steller's sea cows, specifically ones around the Commander Islands, were the last of a much more spaced out population dispersed across the North Pacific coastal zones. During the recent glacial periods and reduction in sea levels and temperatures, suitable habitat substantially regressed, which fragmented the current population. By the time sea levels stabilized circa 5,000 years ago, the population as a whole had already plummeted. Both of these natural occurrences indicated that even without human influence, the Steller's sea cow would have still been a "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_debt dead clade walking]", or an extinction caused by past events.

* As of 2017, two mostly complete skeletons have been found- one in 1987, measuring 9.8 ft. and one in 2017, measuring around 15 ft.

* The estimated weight of modern findings contradicts Steller's original writings: he guessed 4 and 24.3 t (4.4 and 26.8 short tons), which is equivalent to around 8800-53600 lbs.  

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