Where does the sea cow live? sea ​​cows

Hydrodamalis gigas) - exterminated by man mammal of the sirenian order. Discovered in 1741 by the expedition of Vitus Bering. Russian name received in honor of the naturalist Georg Steller, the expedition doctor, on whose descriptions much of the information about this animal is based.

Steller's cow lived only off the coast of the Commander Islands, although modern paleontological data indicate that in prehistoric times its range was noticeably wider. The predatory extermination that followed the discovery for the sake of delicious meat led to the complete disappearance of this animal by 1768.

Steller's cow was a very large sizes. In terms of length and body weight, it probably exceeded all other aquatic mammals, except cetaceans (reaching 7-8 m in length, five or more tons of weight) and its closest relative and probable ancestor - Hydrodamalis Cuesta (body length more than 9 m with a probable weight up to 10 tons). Cabbageweed led a sedentary lifestyle, staying mostly near the shore; apparently she was not capable of diving. The Steller's cow fed exclusively on seaweed, primarily seaweed. The behavior of this animal was characterized by slowness, apathy and lack of fear of humans. These factors, which made it easier for people to harvest cows, contributed to its rapid disappearance. The low total number of cows at the time of opening also played a role - about two thousand.

Occasional reports of sightings of sea cows in a number of areas of the Kamchatka Territory have not been confirmed. Museums around the world preserve a significant number of skeletal remains of cabbage fish, including several complete skeletons, as well as pieces of their skin.

History of discovery

Sketch of a female Steller's cow, described and measured by G. Steller. Considered to be the only depiction of a cow made from life

People first saw sea cows in November 1741 (except for hypothetical contacts with them by the prehistoric inhabitants of Asia and North America and/or later aboriginal tribes of Siberia), when the ship of Commander Vitus Bering "St. Peter", making an expeditionary voyage, was wrecked at attempt to anchor off the island, later named after Bering.

Georg Steller, the expedition's naturalist and doctor, was the only specialist with a natural science background who personally saw and described this species. After the shipwreck, he noticed from the shore in the sea several large oblong objects, similar from a distance to the bottoms of overturned boats, and soon realized that he had seen the backs of large aquatic animals. However, the first cow was obtained by the people from this expedition only at the end of their ten-month stay on the island, six weeks before departure. Eating the meat of sea cows greatly helped travelers, maintaining their strength during the labor-intensive construction of a new ship.

Most of the later accounts are based on Steller's De bestiis marinis, first published in 1751. Steller believed that he was dealing with a manatee (lat. Trichechus manatus), and in his notes he identified the sea cow with it, claiming that this is the same animal that in the Spanish possessions in America is called “manat” (Spanish. manati) . The famous German zoologist E. Zimmermann described the sea cow as a new species in 1780. The now generally accepted binomial name Hydrodamalis gigas(the generic name literally means “water cow,” the specific name means “giant”) was given to the species by the Swedish biologist A. J. Retzius in 1794.

An important contribution to the study of the sea cow was made by an American zoologist of Norwegian origin, Steller biographer Leonard Steineger, who conducted research on the Commanders in 1882-1883 and collected a large number of bones of this animal.

Appearance and structure

Appearance and structural features

Steller's cow skull

The appearance of the cabbage cow was characteristic of all sirens, with the exception that the Steller's cow was much larger than its relatives in size. The animal's body was thick and ridged. The head was very small in comparison with the size of the body, and the cow could freely move its head both to the sides and up and down. The limbs were relatively short, rounded flippers with a joint in the middle, ending in a horny growth, which was compared to a horse's hoof. The body ended in a wide horizontal tail blade with a notch in the middle.

The skin of the Steller cow was bare, folded and extremely thick and, as Steller put it, resembled the bark of an old oak tree. Its color ranged from gray to dark brown, sometimes with whitish spots and stripes. One of the German researchers who studied a preserved piece of Steller cow leather found that in terms of strength and elasticity it is close to the rubber of modern car tires. Perhaps this property of the skin was a protective device that saved the animal from injury from stones in coastal zone.

The ear openings were so small that they were almost lost among the folds of skin. The eyes were also very small, according to eyewitness descriptions - no larger than those of a sheep. The soft and mobile lips were covered with vibrissae as thick as the shaft of a chicken feather. Upper lip was not bifurcated. The Steller cow had no teeth at all. The cabbage grass ground its food using two white horny plates (one on each jaw). There were, according to various sources, 6 or 7 cervical vertebrae. Judging by the skeletons found, there were about 50 vertebrae in the spine (not counting the thoracic one).

The presence of pronounced sexual dimorphism in the Steller cow remains unclear. However, males were apparently somewhat larger than females.

Steller's cow made virtually no sound signals. She usually only snorted, exhaling air, and only when wounded could she make loud moaning sounds. Apparently, this animal had good hearing, as evidenced by the significant development of the inner ear. However, the cows almost did not react at all to the noise of the boats approaching them.

Size

Steller's cow was a very large animal. Steller himself, who described the female cow in detail, estimated her body length at 295 inches (about 7.5 m). The longest documented length of a sea cow is 7.88 m. The female, 7.42 m long, had a neck and nape circumference of 204 cm, a body circumference at shoulder level of 3.67 m, and a largest body circumference in the middle at the back of the belly of 6.22 m. , the length of the tail from the anus to the caudal lobes is 192.5 cm, the circumference of the caudal peduncle at the point where the lobes originate is 143 cm, the distance between the ends of the caudal lobes is 199 cm. It has been suggested that the length of sea cows could be noticeably greater, but some scientists believe that 7.9 m was already the upper limit; however, a length of 9-10 m is also called. The girth of the female, measured by Steller, was 22 feet (6.6 m).

As for the body weight, it was very significant - on the order of several tons. Different sources give varying figures: about 4 tons, 4.5-5.9 tons, up to 10 tons or from 5.4 to 11.2 tons, that is, Steller's cow could be even heavier than the African elephant. The weight of the female, measured by Steller, was about 3.5 tons. In any case, Steller's cow was apparently in first place by weight among all mammals that led an aquatic lifestyle, with the exception of cetaceans (exceeding in average weight even such a giant as the southern elephant seal).

Features of behavior

Most of the time, Steller's cows fed by swimming slowly in shallow water, often using their forelimbs to support themselves on the ground. They did not dive, and their backs constantly stuck out of the water. Seabirds often sat on the backs of cows and pecked crustaceans (whale lice) attached there from the folds of their skin. The cows came so close to the shore that sometimes you could reach them with your hands. Usually the female and the male kept together with the young of the year and the young of the previous year, but in general the cows usually kept in large herds. In the herd, the young animals were in the middle. The animals' attachment to each other was very strong. It is described how the male swam to the killed female lying on the shore for three days. The cub of another female, slaughtered by industrialists, behaved in the same way. Little is known about the reproduction of cabbage weeds. Steller wrote that sea cows are monogamous, mating apparently occurred in the spring.

Steller's cows fed exclusively on seaweed, which grew in abundance in coastal waters, primarily seaweed (which is where the name “cabbage” came from). Feeding cows kept their heads under water while plucking algae. Every 4-5 minutes they raised their heads for a new portion of air, making a sound somewhat reminiscent of a horse snorting. In places where cows fed, the waves washed ashore in large quantities the lower parts of the thalli (“roots” and “stems”) of the algae they ate, as well as droppings similar to horse manure. When resting, the cows lay on their backs, drifting slowly in the quiet bays. In general, the behavior of the cabbage girls was characterized by exceptional slowness and apathy. In winter, the cows lost so much weight that an observer could count their ribs.

Artist's impression of Steller's cows grazing

The lifespan of the Steller's cow, like its closest relative the dugong, could reach ninety years. The natural enemies of this animal have not been described, but Steller spoke of cases of cows dying under the ice in winter. He also said that during a storm, cabbages, if they did not have time to move away from the shore, often died from being hit by rocks in strong waves.

Status of livestock at the time of opening

Area

According to some studies, the range of the Steller's cow expanded significantly during the peak of the last glaciation (about 20 thousand years ago), when the Arctic Ocean was separated from the Pacific by land located on the site of the modern Bering Strait - the so-called Beringia. Climate in the northwestern part Pacific Ocean was softer than modern ones, which allowed the Steller's cow to spread far north along the coast of Asia.

Fossil finds dating back to the late Pleistocene confirm the fact that sirenids were widespread in this geographical area. The presence of the Steller's cow in a limited range near the Commander Islands dates back to the onset of the Holocene. Researchers do not rule out that in other places the cow disappeared in prehistoric times due to persecution by local hunting tribes. However, some American researchers believed that the cow's range could have shrunk without the participation of primitive hunters. In their opinion, by the time of its discovery, Steller's cow was already on the verge of extinction due to natural causes.

Data provided by specialists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) claim that Steller's cow in the 18th century most likely also lived in the western Aleutian Islands, although Soviet sources are more early years pointed out that data on the presence of cows in places outside their known range are based only on finds of their carcasses thrown up at sea. In the 1960s and 70s, individual bones of the Steller's cow were also found in Japan and California. The only known discovery of relatively complete skeletons of cabbage grass outside its known range was made in 1969 on the island of Amchitka (Aleutian ridge); The age of the three skeletons found there was estimated at 125-130 thousand years. In 1971, information appeared about the discovery of the left rib of a sea cow during excavations of a 17th-century Eskimo camp in Alaska in the Noatak River basin. It was concluded that during the late Pleistocene, Steller's cow was widespread in the Aleutian Islands and the Alaskan coast while the climate in the area was warm enough. It is noteworthy that the cow, whose skeleton was found on the island of Amchitka, despite its young age, was not inferior in size to adult specimens from the Commander Islands.

Ecological connections of Steller's cow

The role of the Steller's cow in the ecological balance was significant, primarily due to the consumption of significant amounts of algae by this animal. In places where sea cows ate algae, the number of sea urchins, which form the basis of the diet of sea otters, increased. It is possible that due to the decrease in the amount of algae, underwater hunting for Steller's cormorant fish was also facilitated (therefore, it is possible that the disappearance of the Steller's cormorant was indirectly one of the main reasons for the extinction of this bird). It is noted that the prehistoric range of the Steller's cow coincided with the range of the sea otter. Overall, experts believe that the ecological relationship between the Steller's cow and the sea otter was significant. The extermination of sea otters near Komandor by industrialists could have become an additional factor in the extinction of cabbage birds.

When the sea cows disappeared, large algae formed in coastal strip The Commander Islands are full of thickets. The result of this was the stagnation of coastal waters, their rapid “blooming” and the so-called red tides, named because of the red color of the water due to the intensive reproduction of unicellular dinoflagellate algae. Toxins (some of which stronger than poison curare), produced by certain species of dinoflagellates, can accumulate in the body of mollusks and other invertebrate animals, reaching fish, sea otters and seabirds along the trophic chain, and lead to their death.

Relationship with other sirenids

Steller's cow is a typical representative of the sirenids. Its earliest known ancestor appears to have been a dugong-like Miocene sea cow. Dusisiren Jordani, whose fossil remains have been described in California. A study of mitochondrial DNA showed that the evolutionary divergence of sea cows and dugongs occurred no later than 22 million years ago. The sea cow can be considered the direct ancestor of the cabbageweed Hydrodamalis cuestae, lived in the late Miocene, about 5 million years ago.

The closest living relative of the Steller's cow is most likely the dugong. Steller's cow is classified in the same family as dugongs, but it is classified as a separate genus hydrodamalis.

Extermination

Slaughter of Steller cows by humans

Industrialists who hunted sea otters there and researchers who arrived on the Commander Islands hunted Steller cows for their meat. The slaughter of cabbages was a simple matter - these lethargic and sedentary animals, unable to dive, could not escape from the people chasing them on boats. The harpooned cow, however, often showed such fury and strength that the hunters tried to swim away from it. According to Steller,

The usual method of catching Steller's cows was by hand harpooning. Sometimes they were killed using firearms. The method of catching Steller cows was described in great detail by Steller:

We caught them using a large iron hook, the tip of which resembled the claw of an anchor; We attached its other end with an iron ring to a very long and strong rope, which was dragged from the shore by thirty people... Having harpooned a sea cow, the sailors tried to immediately swim to the side so that the wounded animal would not capsize or break their boat with blows of its powerful tail . After this, the people who remained on the shore began to pull the rope and persistently drag the desperately resisting animal to the shore. The people in the boat, meanwhile, urged the animal on with the help of another rope and exhausted it with constant blows until it, exhausted and completely motionless, was pulled ashore, where it was already struck with bayonets, knives and other weapons. Sometimes big pieces were cut off from a living animal and she, resisting, hit the ground with such force with her tail and fins that pieces of skin even fell off from the body... From the wounds inflicted in the back of the body, blood flowed in a stream. When the wounded animal was under water, the blood did not gush out, but as soon as he stuck his head out to grab a breath of air, the blood flow resumed with the same force...

With this method of fishing, only a part of the cows fell into the hands of people, the rest died at sea from wounds - according to some estimates, the hunters received only one out of five harpooned cabbages.

From 1743 to 1763, several parties of fur industrialists with a total number of up to fifty people wintered on the Commander Islands. They all hunted sea cows for meat. By 1754, sea cows were completely exterminated from Copper Island. It is believed that the last cow off Bering Island was killed by an industrialist named Popov in 1768. In the same year, researcher Martin Sauer made a note in his journal about their complete absence from this island.

There is information that one of the members of the Bering expedition, a certain Yakovlev, claimed that in 1755 the leadership of the settlement on the island. Bering issued a decree banning the hunting of sea cows. However, by that time, the local population had apparently already been destroyed almost entirely.

Eating

The main purpose of hunting the Steller's cow was to obtain meat. One of the participants in Bering's expedition said that up to three tons of meat could be obtained from a slaughtered cow. It is known that the meat of one cow was enough to feed thirty-three people for a month. Slaughtered cows were consumed not only by wintering parties, they were also usually taken with them as provisions by sailing ships. The meat of sea cows was, according to reviews of those who tried it, of excellent taste. Steller wrote:

The fat is not oily, but harsh, white as snow; if it sits in the sun for several days, it becomes pleasantly yellow, like the best Dutch oil. Rendered, it tastes superior to the best beef fat; ...extremely pleasant in smell and very nutritious, so we drank cups of it without experiencing any disgust. The tail consists almost exclusively of fat. The meat of cubs resembles a pig, the meat of adults resembles veal; it cooks for half an hour and at the same time swells so much that it almost doubles in volume. The meat of old animals is indistinguishable from beef... We soon experienced how beneficial it is for nutrition, especially those who suffered from the effects of scurvy.

The insides of the Steller cow (heart, liver, kidneys) were not good taste qualities, were tough and, as Steller wrote, usually thrown away. The fat rendered from subcutaneous fat was not only used for food, but was also used for lighting. Poured into a lamp, it burned without smell or soot. The strong and thick skin of cabbage fish was used to make boats.

Preserved skeletons and bones

The skeletal remains of Steller cows have been studied quite fully. Their bones are not rare, since people still come across them on the Commander Islands. In museums around the world there is significant number bones and skeletons of this animal - according to some data, fifty-nine world museums have such exhibits. Several remains of a sea cow skin are also preserved. Steller's cow replicas reconstructed from high degree accuracy, are available in many museums. Among this number of exhibits are several well-preserved skeletons:

Samples were taken from bones stored in museums to sequence the genome of Steller's cow.

Former USSR

• Zoological Museum of Moscow University - skeleton collected in 1837.
• in St. Petersburg - an incomplete skeleton of an individual 6.87 m long (found in 1855).
• Paleontological Museum in Kyiv - complete skeleton (-1882).
• Zoological Museum at the National Scientific and Natural History Museum of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv - complete skeleton (1879-1882).
• Khabarovsk Museum of Local Lore - an almost complete skeleton of one individual, to which several bones of another specimen were added (1897-1898).
• Kharkov Museum of Nature - complete composite skeleton (1879-1882, some elements added in the 1970s).
• Zoological Museum named after Benedict Dybovsky in Lviv - complete skeleton (1879-1882).
• Aleutian Museum of Local Lore in the village of Nikolskoye on Bering Island - an almost complete skeleton of a cub (discovered in 1986).
• Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local Lore - two incomplete skeletons, totaling fifty-six bones (1879).

USA

• Washington, National Museum of Natural History - composite skeleton. Collected in 1883 by Steineger.
• University of California at Berkeley - almost complete skeleton, composed of bones from several individuals (acquired in 1904).
• Museum of Comparative Zoology (part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History at Harvard University in Massachusetts - almost complete composite skeleton (probably from bones collected by Steineger).

Europe

• London Natural History Museum - complete skeleton, composed of the bones of two individuals (acquired in 1882).
• Edinburgh Museum - almost complete composite skeleton (found on Medny Island by Russian scientist D.F. Sinitsyn, brought to Great Britain in 1897).
• National Museum of Natural History in Paris - two almost complete composite skeletons (acquired 1898).
• Natural History Museum Vienna - almost complete composite skeleton (1897).
• The Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm - an incomplete skeleton (from bones collected in 1879 by the expedition of A. Nordenskiöld on the barque Vega).
• Natural History Museum at the University of Helsinki - complete skeleton of a young individual, 5.3 m long, who died of natural causes. Compiled from bones collected in 1861 by the Chief Ruler of the Russian-American Company (in fact, the governor of Russian Alaska) I. V. Furugelm.

Possibility of preservation to this day

Steller's cow is considered extinct; the status of its population according to the International Red Book is extinct species (English: Extinct). However, it is sometimes believed that for some time after the 1760s, sea cows were occasionally encountered by the natives of the Russian Far East. Thus, in 1834, two Russian-Aleutian Creoles claimed that on the coast of Bering Island they saw “a skinny animal with a cone-shaped body, small forelimbs, which breathed with its mouth and had no rear fins.” Such reports, according to some researchers, were quite frequent in the 19th century.

Several pieces of evidence that remain unconfirmed even date back to the 20th century. In 1962, members of a Soviet whaler's crew allegedly observed a group of six animals in the Gulf of Anadyr, the description of which was similar to the appearance of a Steller's cow. In 1966, a note about the observation of cabbage grass was published in the newspaper Kamchatsky Komsomolets. In 1976, the editors of the magazine “Around the World” received a letter from Kamchatka meteorologist Yu. V. Koev, who said that he saw cabbage grass at Cape Lopatka:

I can say that in August 1976, in the area of ​​Cape Lopatka, I saw a Steller’s cow. What allows me to make such a statement? I saw whales, killer whales, seals, sea lions, fur seals, sea otters and walruses more than once. This animal is not like any of the above. Length about five meters. It swam very slowly in shallow water. It seemed to roll like a wave. First, the head with a characteristic growth appeared, then the massive body and then the tail. Yes, yes, that’s what attracted my attention (by the way, there is a witness). Because when a seal or a walrus swims like this, their hind legs are pressed together, and you can see that these are flippers, and this one had a tail like a whale’s. It seems... that every time she surfaced with her stomach up, slowly rolling her body. And she put her tail like a whale’s “butterfly” when the whale goes into the depths...

None of these observations have been confirmed. However, some enthusiasts and cryptozoologists even now consider it probable that a small population of Steller cows exists in remote and inaccessible areas of the Kamchatka Territory. There is a debate among hobbyists about the possibility of cloning cabbage using biological material obtained from preserved samples of skin and bones. If Steller's cow had survived until modern era, then, as many zoologists write, with its harmless disposition, it could become the first marine pet.

Steller's cow in culture

Probably the most famous mention of the Steller's cow in works of classical literature is its image in Rudyard Kipling's story “The White Cat”. In this work main character, white fur seal, meets with a herd of sea cows that survived in the Bering Sea inaccessible to people:

The creatures really had a strange appearance and did not look like a whale, a shark, a walrus, a seal, a beluga whale, a seal, a stingray, an octopus, or a cuttlefish. They had a spindle-shaped body, twenty or thirty feet long, and instead of hind flippers they had a flat tail, like a spade of wet leather. Their heads were the most ridiculous shape imaginable, and when they looked up from eating, they began to swing on their tails, ceremoniously bowing in all directions and waving their front flippers, like a fat man in a restaurant calling the waiter.

see also

Notes

1. Life of animals. Volume 7. Mammals / ed. Sokolova V. E. (chief editor), Gilyarov M. S., Polyansky Yu. I., etc. - 2nd ed. - M.: Education, 1989. - P. 403. - 558 p. - ISBN 5-09-001434-5
2. Sokolov V. E. Systematics of mammals. Volume 3. Cetaceans, carnivores, pinnipeds, aardvarks, proboscideans, hyraxes, sirens, artiodactyls, callouseds, odd-toed ungulates. - M.: graduate School, 1979. - P. 332. - 528 p.
3. Sokolov V. E. Five-language dictionary of animal names. Mammals. Latin, Russian, English, German, French. / under the general editorship of academician. V. E. Sokolova. - M.: Rus. lang., 1984. - P. 121. - 10,000 copies.
4. Animal life / ed. S. P. Naumov and A. P. Kuzyakin.. - M.: “Enlightenment”, 1971. - T. 6 (mammals). - P. 409-410. - 628 p. - 300,000 copies.

Candidate biological sciences Nikolay Vekhov. Photo by the author

I first came to Bering Island, part of the Commander Islands archipelago, in the summer of 1971, as an intern student at the Moscow State University Faculty of Biology, collecting material for thesis. Since then, I have been interested in everything connected with the Commanders, and the dream of being in these parts again did not leave me. Three years ago, at the invitation of the leadership of the Commander Nature Reserve, I visited the second largest island of the archipelago - Medny, where I studied natural complexes.

The nature of the islands holds many mysteries. One of them is related to the history of the discovery and development of these territories. The discoverers of the Commander Islands discovered in their waters a giant sea animal, which, according to all the laws of biology, could not live in the cold waters of the North Pacific Ocean.

What kind of animal is this and what fate was in store for it?

Bering Island is the largest in the Commander Islands archipelago.

The village of Nikolskoye on Bering Island.

The coastline of Bering Island is cut by steep, inaccessible cliffs.

Sea cow. Copy from a drawing by Sven Waxel made in 1742. Illustration from the book by L. S. Berg “Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka expeditions. 1725-1742". Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons/PD.

A female Steller's cow, described and measured by Georg Steller. The drawing is considered the only image of this animal made from life. Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons/PD.

Skeleton of a Steller's cow on display National Museum natural history in Paris. Photo: FankMonk/Wikimedia Commons/CCA-SA-3.0.

Toporkov Islands (left) and Ariy Kamen.

Kelp thickets in the North Pacific Ocean.

Northwestern fur seal rookery on Bering Island.

Rocky ridge on Bering Island.

Blue whale near Bering Island.

The plans for the final stage of the Second Kamchatka Expedition of 1733-1743 under the command of the outstanding navigator and polar explorer Captain-Commander Vitus Bering (see “Science and Life” No.) were grandiose: to explore the Arctic coast of Siberia and Far East, find sea routes unknown to seafarers to the northwestern shores of America, and also reach the coast of Japan. The outstanding achievement of this unprecedented campaign was the discovery of the Commander Islands.

On June 4, 1741, two packet boats, the “Saint Apostle Peter” under the command of Vitus Bering and the “Saint Apostle Paul”, whose captain was Alexey Ilyich Chirikov, set sail from the shores of Kamchatka in the area of ​​the Petropavlovsk fort, where the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky later grew up. Soon they got lost in the thick fog and lost each other. “St. Peter”, after an unsuccessful three-day search for the second ship, set off on a solo voyage. Despite the storms and squally winds, the packet boat reached Kodiak Island off the coast of America. On the way back, the ship of the brave sailors, pursued by severe bad weather, lost control and was seriously damaged. Death seemed inevitable, but suddenly desperate sailors saw the silhouette of an unknown island on the horizon and landed on it on November 4, 1741. Wintering on the island turned out to be a very difficult ordeal. Not everyone survived it. Captain-Commander Vitus Bering died. This is where he was buried. The island was subsequently named after him, and the entire archipelago, including four islands (Beringa, Medny, Ariy Kamen and Toporkov), was called the Commander Islands.

The second packet boat "St. Apostle Paul" under the command of Captain-Commander Alexei Chirikov reached the shores of America and returned to Kamchatka on October 11 of the same year.

Among Bering's associates who became forced winterers was the German doctor and naturalist, adjunct of natural history at St. Petersburg University, Georg Wilhelm Steller (see “Science and Life” no.). At first he ended up in the land academic detachment of the expedition, but he dreamed of taking part in the upcoming sea voyage. In 1741, Georg Steller was included in the crew of the packet boat "St. Apostle Peter". The scientist became a witness and participant in the discovery of the Commander Islands and the first collector of scientific information about plants, marine animals - fur seals (cats), sea lions and sea otters (sea beavers), weather and soils, mountains and coastal terraces, coastal reefs and other natural complexes of these lands .

Steller discovered a unique marine mammal on the Commanders - the sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), named after its discoverer Steller's. The second name - cabbageweed (Rhytina borealis) - was invented by the naturalist himself. The mammals gathered in herds on the so-called cabbage pastures among abundant thickets of seaweed, mainly brown kelp and alaria, known as seaweed. At first, Steller believed he was dealing with manatees, which North America called manats or manati (later this name began to be used in relation to all similar-looking marine mammals, including the sea cow). But I soon realized that I was mistaken.

Steller was the only naturalist who saw this monster in reality, observed its behavior and described it. According to diary entries published by L. S. Berg in the book “The Discovery of Kamchatka and Bering’s Kamchatka Expeditions. 1725-1742" (L.: Glavsevmorput Publishing House, 1935), you can imagine what the animal looked like.

“Up to the navel it looks like a seal, and from the navel to the tail it looks like a fish. Its skull is very similar to that of a horse, but its head is covered with meat and hair, reminiscent, especially with its lips, of the head of a buffalo. In the mouth, instead of teeth, on each side there are two wide, oblong, flat and shaky bones. One of them is attached to the palate, the other to the lower jaw. On these bones there are numerous furrows converging obliquely at an angle and convex calluses with which the animal grinds its usual food - sea ​​plants…

The head is connected to the body by a short neck. Most notable are the front legs and breasts. The legs are made of two joints, the outermost of which is quite similar to the leg of a horse. At the bottom, these front paws are equipped with a kind of scraper made of numerous and dense bristles. With the help of these paws, deprived of both fingers and claws, the animal swims, knocks sea plants off the rocks and […] hugs its mate […].

The back of a sea cow is difficult to distinguish from the back of a bull, the spinal ridge protrudes in relief, and on the sides there are oblong depressions the entire length of the body.

The abdomen is round, distended and always so full that at the slightest wound the intestines burst out with a whistle. Its proportions are similar to the belly of a frog […]. The tail, as it approaches the fin that replaces the hind legs, becomes thinner, but its width directly in front of the fin still reaches half a meter. Apart from the fin at the end of the tail, the animal has no other fins, and in this way it differs from whales. Its fin stands as horizontally as that of whales and dolphins.

The skin of this animal has a dual nature. The outer skin is black or black-brown, an inch thick and dense, almost like cork, with many folds, wrinkles and depressions around the head […]. The inner hide is thicker than ox hide, very durable and white in color. Beneath it is a layer of fat surrounding the entire body of the animal. The layer of fat is four fingers thick. Then comes the meat.

I estimate the weight of the animal with skin, muscles, meat, bones and entrails at 200 pounds.”

Steller saw hundreds of huge humpback carcasses splashing during the high tide, which, in his apt comparison, looked like Dutch boats turned upside down. After observing them for some time, the naturalist realized that these animals belonged to a previously undescribed biological species of marine mammals from the group of sirenians. In his diary, he wrote: “If I were asked how many of them I saw on Bering Island, then I would not be slow to answer - they cannot be counted, they are countless... By an unfortunate accident, I had the opportunity to observe the lifestyle and habits for ten whole months these animals... Every day they appeared almost in front of the very door of my home.”

The size of the cabbages was more like elephants than cows. For example, the length of the cabbage skeleton exhibited in the St. Petersburg Zoological Museum, which, according to scientists, is 250 years old, is 7.5 m. The northern species of marine mammals from the ancient family of sirens was truly gigantic: the chest circumference of such a colossus exceeded six meters!

According to the surviving descriptions of the members of the expedition of Vitus Bering and the fishermen who later visited the Commanders, the habitats of the Steller's cow were limited to two large islands of the archipelago - Bering and Medny, although modern paleontologists say that in prehistoric times its range was wider. What is surprising is that the animals were found in cold waters, only slightly south of the winter ice limit, although their close relatives - dugongs and manatees - live in warm seas. Apparently, the thick skin, similar to tree bark, and an impressive layer of fat helped the Steller cow to retain heat in subarctic latitudes.

It can be assumed that cabbage whales never swam far from the shore, since they could not dive deep in search of food, and moreover, in the open sea they became prey for predatory killer whales. The animals moved along the shallows with the help of two stumps in the front part of the body, resembling paws, and in deep water they pushed themselves forward, making vertical strikes with a large forked tail. The skin of the cabbage ducks was not smooth, like that of a manatee or dugong. Numerous grooves and wrinkles appeared on it - hence the fourth name of the animal - Rhytina Stellerii, which literally means “wrinkled Steller”.

Sea cows, as we have already mentioned, were vegetarians. Gathered in huge herds, they plucked underwater thickets of “algae forests” that were many meters high. According to Steller’s observations, “these insatiable creatures eat incessantly and, due to their irrepressible gluttony, almost always keep their heads under water. While they are grazing like this, they have no other worries than to stick their nose out every four or five minutes and push the air out of their lungs along with a fountain of water. The sound they make at the same time resembles at the same time a horse’s neighing, snoring and snorting […]. They have little interest in what is happening around them, not caring at all about preserving own life and safety."

It is impossible to judge the size of Steller's cow populations at the time of Vitus Bering. It is known that Steller observed large clusters of cabbageweed, numbering 1500-2000 individuals. Sailors reported that they saw this animal on the Commanders “in enormous numbers.” Particularly large accumulations were observed at the southern tip of Bering Island, at the cape later called Cape Manati.

In winter, sea cows became very thin and, as Steller writes, they were so thin that all their vertebrae could be counted. During this period, animals could suffocate under floating ice floes, not having the strength to move them apart and breathe air. In winter, cabbage fish were often found crushed by ice and thrown ashore. The usual storms off the Commander Islands were a big challenge for them. Sedentary sea cows often did not have time to swim to a safe distance from the shore, and they were thrown by the waves onto the rocks, where they died from impacts on sharp stones. Eyewitnesses said that relatives sometimes tried to help the wounded animals, but, as a rule, without success. Scientists later noticed similar “comradely support” in the behavior of other marine animals - dolphins and whales.

Little is known about the life of sea cows. Thus, Steller was amazed at the extreme gullibility of the cabbage girls. They let people get so close to them that they could be touched from the shore. And not just touch. People killed animals for tasty meat. The peak of cow slaughter occurred in 1754, and the last individuals disappeared around 1768. In short, the sea cow - the northernmost species in the family of mysterious sirens - was destroyed just 27 years after it was discovered.

Almost 250 years have passed since then, but even today among scientists and simply interested people there are many supporters who support the version that the “northern siren” is alive, it’s just that, due to its small number, it is very difficult to find. Sometimes information appears that this “monster” was seen alive. Rare eyewitness accounts give hope that tiny populations of Steller's cow could still survive in quiet and inaccessible bays. For example, in August 1976, in the area of ​​Cape Lopatka (the southernmost point of the Kamchatka Peninsula), two meteorologists allegedly saw a Steller's cow. They claimed that they knew whales, killer whales, seals, sea lions, seals, sea otters and walruses well and could not confuse an unknown animal with them. They saw a beast almost five meters long slowly swimming through the shallow water. In addition, observers reported that it moved in the water like a wave: first a head appeared, and then a massive body with a tail. Unlike seals and walruses, whose hind legs are pressed together and resemble flippers, the animal they spotted had a tail like a whale. A few years earlier, in 1962, information about a meeting with manat came from scientists on a Soviet research vessel. Six large ones grazing in shallow water unusual looking sailors noticed dark-skinned animals near Cape Navarin, washed by the Bering Sea. In 1966, one of the Kamchatka newspapers reported that fishermen again saw sea cows south of Cape Navarin. Moreover, they gave a detailed and very accurate description of the animals.

Can such information be trusted? After all, the eyewitnesses had neither photographs nor video footage. Some domestic and foreign experts on marine mammals claim that there is no reliable evidence of the presence of the Steller's cow anywhere outside the Commander Islands. However, there are some facts that cast doubt on the correctness of this point of view.

Participant of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, historian G. F. Miller wrote: “One must think that they (Aleuts - author’s note) feed mostly on sea animals, which are caught in the sea there, namely: whales, manats (Steller’s cows. - Author's note), sea lions, sea ​​cats, beavers (sea otters, or sea otters - author's note) and seals...” The following information can serve as indirect confirmation of the scientist’s words: in the 20th century, the bones of a Steller’s cow, dating back to prehistoric times (approximately 3,700 years ago), were found twice and both times - specifically in the Aleutian Islands. In a word, despite the fact that Steller and the fishermen saw cabbageweed exclusively on the Bering and Medny islands, natural habitat The sea cow apparently also included the coastal waters of the eastern islands of the Aleutian-Commander ridge.

This species was discovered during Bering's expedition to the coast of the Commander Islands in 1741. Steller's cow received its name in honor of the expedition member, naturalist Georg Steller. It took humanity only 27 years to completely exterminate this amazing sea cow, or, as it is also called, cabbage weed.

SEA GIANT

In June 1741, Bering set sail on the packet boat St. Peter to the northern shore of the Pacific Ocean to find out whether there was a route from Siberia to America by land. It was from this expedition that neither Bering himself nor half of his team, consisting of 78 people, returned. Just before sailing, it turned out that the ship's doctor was ill, so Bering invited the German doctor and naturalist Georg Steller to take his place.

There were no signs of trouble; the team successfully landed on the west coast of Alaska. But on the way back, scurvy broke out on the ship. When at the beginning of November the sailors saw the coast in the distance, they were very happy, deciding that they were close to the mainland. However, they were soon disappointed - this was the coast of Kamchatka. But water and food were almost running out, so they decided to land on the island that today bears the name of Bering.

Weakened by illness and hunger, the people somehow settled into hastily built huts. And their ship was torn from its anchor by a storm and thrown ashore.

Almost immediately during high tide, Steller noticed the backs of some huge animals in the water, but his duties as a doctor did not allow him to study them. A few days later, when the illness had subsided a little, he had the opportunity to take a better look at the animals. The water was simply swarming with huge carcasses; according to Steller, they were impossible to count.

According to the scientist's description, these were giant animals. Some individuals reached a length of 10 meters and weighed from 4 to 11 tons. The head of the beast was incomparably small compared to the body, which ended in a forked whale tail. These waterfowl moved with the help of rounded front flippers, at the end of which there was a horny growth, shaped like a hoof. The folded skin, similar, according to the scientist, to the bark of an old oak tree, was durable, and the subcutaneous fat was thick, which protected the animal from sharp stones and cold.

The sea cow ate algae, which is why it got the name cabbageweed. Peace-loving, trusting animals at first were not afraid of people, they swam so close to them that they could be petted. If a person hurt them, they walked away with resentment, but quickly forgot everything and returned. They loved to soak in the shallow waters near the shore in the thick algae. Adults carefully guarded their young; when they “moved” to a new place, the babies were placed in the center of the herd so that none of them would become victims of a predator.

REASONS FOR THE DISAPPEARANCE

At first, sailors did not consider Steller's cows as potential food. But this is hardly due to sympathy for animals. Apparently, the people were so weakened that it was easier for them to kill with a club and eat the sea otter, and there were many of them here. But the sea otters quickly realized that people posed a danger to them and became more careful. It was then that the idea came to try sea cow meat - it turned out to taste similar to beef. The animal fat had a pleasant taste and smell, and the milk was fatty and sweet.

Steller's cows were caught in the following way. A huge iron hook was loaded into the boat and floated up to the animal. The strongest one struck with a hook, and when it sank into the body of the unfortunate victim, 30 people pulled her to the shore with a rope tied to the hook. Those in the boat continued to strike with knives so that the animal would resist less. Pieces of meat were cut from a still living creature, which was beating so hard that the skin fell off in scabs.

Other cows, when their brothers began to thrash and thrash in pain, rushed to the rescue. They tried to turn the boat over, throwing their whole bodies onto the rope and hitting the hook with their tails to break it. And, it must be said, not all of their attempts were unsuccessful. And if a female became the victim, then the male, without reacting to danger and pain, rushed to the rescue. And he didn’t leave her, even if she was already dead. One morning the male was found on the shore next to the body of his girlfriend. For three days he did not leave her side.

As one of the expedition members later said, from harvesting one cabbage plant one could get three tons of meat, which would be enough to feed 33 people for a whole month. The subcutaneous fat of the animal was used not only for food, but also for lamps. And boats were made from the skin of Steller cows. It is clear that the sailors had to survive somehow, but with such a barbaric attitude, while catching one animal, they simultaneously killed five more.

Soon the sailors restored their ship and went home. They brought with them about 800 sea otter skins and stories about the abundance of fur-bearing animals on the Commander Islands. As a result of such advertising, a huge number of Arctic foxes and sea otters were destroyed here in a short time. And the cow... It was of no value to fur traders, but was excellent food for hunters. Over the course of a year, people destroyed more than 170 animals. And by 1768, the two thousand population of Steller cows on the Commander Islands had completely disappeared.

WHAT IF THEY SURVIVED

After the seemingly complete disappearance of cabbage weeds, several decades passed until people started talking about them again.

During his round-the-world expedition of 1803-1806, naturalist Wilhelm Thielenau saw this animal. In 1834, two hunters said that not far from Bering Island they encountered a skinny animal with a cone-shaped body, small forelimbs, which breathed through the mouth and had no rear fins.

At the beginning of the last century, fishermen found Steller's cow, washed out by a storm, on the southern coast of the Chukotka Peninsula. And sailors on whaling ships said that they sometimes saw an unusual animal in the sea, either a fish or a whale.

One such eyewitness account from the whaler "Buran" was published in 1963 in the magazine "Nature". The man claimed that in the Bering Sea he saw a flock of huge unknown animals, whose body length was eight meters. That is, they could not be seals, walruses, or killer whales. Most likely, Steller's cows lived not only in the area of ​​the Commander Islands. In old records you can find evidence that cabbage birds were seen in Chukotka, California and the Aleutian Islands. Therefore, the sailor from the Buran could have met them.

In 1966, a note appeared in the newspaper “Kamchatsky Komsomolets” that unknown animals with dark skins were seen on the shallows in the north-east of Kamchatka. And in 1967, inspector Pinegin, walking around the shore of Bering Island, came across a pile of bones that clearly belonged to a Steller’s cow. And these bones were fresh.

In 1976, the editors of the magazine “Around the World” received a letter from Kamchatka from a local meteorologist. He wrote that at the end of summer near Cape Lopatka he saw a sea cow, about five meters long. First, a small head appeared from the water, then a huge body, and finally a characteristic tail, similar to a whale.

The latest evidence dates back to 2012. Some online publications published sensational news: close small island A herd of Steller's cows consisting of 30 individuals was discovered in the Canadian Arctic archipelago.

I really want to believe that several pairs of these peaceful and trusting animals were able to hide in secluded bays and wait out the fur boom there. They just don’t trust people anymore and that’s why they hide.

Manatees are huge animals that live in the sea and feed on underwater vegetation. Their weight is up to 600 kg, and they can reach 5 meters in length. Most likely, the ancestors of manatees lived on land, but then decided to change their place of residence and moved to the water element. Initially, there were more than 20 species, but only three are known to man: manatees and dugongs. The first ones, unfortunately, no longer exist, since man has completely exterminated this species.

People discovered what a sea cow was in the 17th century and immediately began to mercilessly exterminate them. The meat of these animals is very tasty, the fat is soft and tender, which is especially good for making ointments; the skin of sea cows was also used. Manatees are now declared an endangered species and hunting them is prohibited. But still sea cows suffer from human activity. They continually swallow nets and hooks, which slowly kill them. Great harm Their health is damaged by pollution of ocean waters and the construction of dams.

Due to their large weight, manatees do not have many enemies. They are threatened in the sea and in tropical rivers by caimans. Despite their phlegmatic nature and slowness, they still manage to avoid certain death, so the main enemy of sea cows is man. You cannot catch them, but a large number of animals die under ships, so many countries are developing programs to save manatees.

The sea cow prefers to live in shallow water, the optimal depth for it is 2-3 meters. Every day, manatees eat about 20% of their body weight in food, so they are specially bred in areas where excessive vegetation spoils water quality. They feed mainly early in the morning or in the evening, and during the day they rest, swimming to the shore to bask in the sun.

There are three types of manatees: African, Amazonian and American. The African sea cow, as befits all Africans, is slightly darker than its relatives. She lives in warm equatorial rivers and on the West African coast. The Amazonian manatee lives only in water, so its skin is smooth and even, and there is a white or pink spot on its chest and in some cases on its belly. The American sea cow prefers the Atlantic coast, she especially likes it. She can swim in both salty and fresh water. American manatees are the largest.

Manatees are very interesting to watch, their tail looks like an oar, and their front paws with claws resemble flippers. They use them very skillfully; they can walk along the bottom, scratch themselves, hold and stuff food into their mouths. Looking for food, basking in the sun, playing with other representatives of the species - these are all the worries that the sea cow has taken upon itself. The manatee mostly lives alone, only during the mating season the female is surrounded by about two dozen suitors.

The cub is carried for about a year, at birth its weight is about 30 kg, and its length is slightly more than a meter. He lives with his mother for about two years, she shows him her usual places to look for food. Then the manatee grows up and becomes independent. It is believed that their connection is inextricable and is maintained throughout life.

One of the most bitter reminders of human cruelty can be the stories of Steller's cow (lat. Hydrodamalis gigas). Its other names are sea cow or cabbage. It was first discovered off the coast of the Commander Islands in 1741, and 27 years later the last representative of the species living there was killed.

Yes, yes, it took a little more than a quarter of a century to completely exterminate a population of more than 2 thousand individuals. People tried very hard: at least 170 heads were killed a year, and the peak of this bloody massacre occurred in 1754, when half a thousand cabbages were destroyed at once. However, no measures were taken to preserve and maintain the number of animals.

The misfortunes of the sea cow began in 1741, when the ship “St. Peter” crashed near one of the small islands, which was later named after the ship’s captain, Vitus Bering. On this godforsaken island the team was forced to stay for the winter. Unfortunately, not everyone survived it; the captain was among the dead. To survive, the sailors were forced to catch one of the strange sea animals eating algae near the shore.

Its meat turned out to be not only tasty, but also healthy. The patients quickly regained their strength and soon the team was able to build a new ship to return home on. Among the survivors was the naturalist Georg Steller, who described the sea cows in detail. True, the scientist himself was sure that this was in front of him, and only in 1780 the German zoologist Zimmermann was able to prove that this was a completely new species.

What did this animal look like? According to Steller, it was a huge and very clumsy creature, whose body length reached 7.5-10 meters and weight - 3.5-11 tons. His body was very thick, and his head seemed very small in comparison. The forelimbs were rounded flippers with one joint in the center. They ended in a small horny growth, similar to a horse's hoof. Instead of hind limbs, the cabbage bird had a powerful forked tail.

Steller's cow leather was very durable. It was even often used to make sea boats. It was so folded and thick that it looked a little like oak bark. Such protection was needed to escape from sharp coastal stones, especially in rough seas.

Sea cows spent almost all their time eating algae. They were so passionate about the process that they allowed boats with hunters to calmly sail between them, choosing suitable prey. The “hunt” itself is otherwise brutal reprisal very difficult to name. Well, judge for yourself: first the harpooner drove his lethal weapon, and then about 30 people dragged the unfortunate woman to the shore. Of course, the wounded animal desperately resisted and suffered.

Finally, extremely exhausted, the cabbage fish was dragged ashore and finished off. Sometimes pieces of meat were cut directly from a living cow, which caused incredible suffering. But the most unpleasant thing is that this method of fishing made it possible to pull out only one out of five animals, while the rest died in the water.

It is interesting that after the extermination of Steller’s cow, the scientific world was excited several times by reports of people meeting these unique creatures. Unfortunately, none of them have been confirmed yet. Last news date back to June 2012: according to some online publications, Steller's cow is alive - a population of 30 individuals was found off a small island belonging to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The melting of the ice made it possible to penetrate into its most remote corners, where the cabbages were found. Let's hope that the rumors will be confirmed, and humanity will be able to correct its fatal mistake.