Manatee in Harlem

A sure sign that Harlem is hotter than ever? When an endangered species comes to the neighborhood to cool down!

Cruising past the nightclubs of Manhattan and continuing uptown, a manatee has been spotted in the Hudson River at least three times in the last week - in Chelsea, Harlem and Westchester County.

"It was gigantic," said Randy Shull in an interview with the Associated Press, who said he spotted the manatee Sunday afternoon while boating in Westchester. "When we saw it surface, its back was just mammoth."

Kim Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation, a nonprofit group devoted to marine mammals, called it a "bona fide" sighting, but there isn't photographic proof.

It is unusual for one of the creatures, often associated with the warm waters of Florida, to travel so far north but they have been reported along the shores of Long Island and even Rhode Island. Here's another stock photo of the manatee.