This is Scientific American 60-Second Science, I'm Ashley Papp.

Okay, listen to this.

If you had to guess, what would you say made those sounds?

Did you guess that they were from a blubbery 10-foot-long sea cow, otherwise known as a manatee?

If you didn't get it, don't be too hard on yourself.

That's what manatees sound like when they're communicating in the warm, shallow waters around

Florida.

And researchers are starting to learn how to decode this crazy, high-pitched chatter.

We know that manatees produce vocalizations via the vocal folds in their throat, similar

to how humans and other mammals produce noise.

They use their voices for talking to each other, and probably not for echo locating like

dolphins do.

And while previous research has documented the noises, new work looked into connecting

how manatee chatter in the wild is related to behavior in different social settings.

Beth Brady, a marine memologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Aquarium in Florida, ran

the new research.

She says that manatees use vocalizations to convey all sorts of things, kind of like

the way a house pet lets you know that they're not into that new brand of food, or they're

really happy to see you at the end of a long day.

If you have a dog or a cat, you can tell by the way you're cat meows or your dog barks,

whether or not it wants to go outside, whether it wants to play, but they're still using that

bark or just that meow.

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