In honor of Manatee Awareness Month, Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo wants to raise awareness about an iconic Florida species, by advocating for the first-ever manatee emoji. Why do manatees deserve an emoji? Not only are they adored mammals, they are also threatened. Elephants, tigers and penguins all have emojis, so why not manatees? By creating an emoji, we are making it easier for people to think about and share their love for these gentle giants.

Emojis are small images used frequently in text-based communications. The use of emojis has exponentially increased over recent years, perhaps because they are visual and succinct ways of expressing thoughts and reactions in areas of limited space and time. Oxford Dictionary named an emoji the Word of the Year for 2015.

Our petition hopes to leverage this popularity by convincing Unicode, the nonprofit that regulates the universal coding for emojis, that there is a sufficient demand for a manatee emoji. Help us reach our goal of 25,000 signatures!

Please sign the petition and share it on social media to help us get the support we need. For more information on manatees, visit lowryparkzoo.org!