Photo: Brent Durand / Moment / Getty Images
Manatees are native to warm waters like Florida, so when one visits Rhode Island, it's a pretty rare sight. Southern New England just had its first manatee spotting since 2016. It was spotted in Quononchontaug Pond. Check out the Tweet below from the RI Dept. of Environmental Management.
-Fun Fact from the RI DEM: Manatees are often nicknamed sea cows due to their diet of seagrasses and marine plants but are actually more closely related to elephants.
-Fun fact from me: Quononchontaug is pronounced KWANNA-kin-tawg. It's hardly ever pronounced correctly outside the Ocean State, with one notable exception: On "The X Files," the hit Fox TV hit series from the '90s, FBI Agent Fox Mulder's family had a home in Quononchontaug, which is a small village in the town of Charlestown, RI.
The previous sighting of a manatee, off Cape Cod in 2016, resulted in the animal being rescued and rehabbed at Mystic Aquarium. Here's a YouTube video of the rescue:
photo: Getty Images source: twitter.com/RhodeIslandDEM video: YouTube