People in Florida keep calling the cops about distressed-looking manatees on the beach.
They are not actually in distress — it’s just manatee mating season.
A local sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post: “If you see this… don’t call us.”
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A Florida sheriff’s office asked residents to stop calling them about manatees having group sex.
“We get calls all the time from citizens when they see this, believing the manatees are in distress,” said Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
“We can assure you they are more than fine.”
The post included a video accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” showing several manatees in the shallow waters of a Florida shoreline.
“If you see this… don’t call us,” reads the text on the video. “They are more than fine. It’s mating season.”
The Sheriff’s Office said in the caption of the Facebook post that the video simply shows the manatees mating in herds.
According to the Save the Manatee conservation charity, manatees don’t form pair bonds like other animal species do. Instead, a single female is followed by a group of a dozen or more males in a mating herd.
The female manatee then mates with one or more males in a “sort of free-for-all” mating process that can last three weeks, the group said.
This can often look concerning to onlookers and tends to look particularly dramatic in shallow waters, the conservation charity said on its website.
Though manatees mate throughout the year, herds such as those captured in the Facebook post are more often witnessed by people in summer months, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The officials urged residents not to call them when witnessing such behavior and assured the public that the manatees are “a-okay.”
The post added that it is illegal and potentially dangerous to touch or disturb mating manatees.
