Manatee emoji?

[Shawn Steele]

Short answer: not really :)

Most of (particularly the initial batch) of emoji were used in other contexts before Unicode.  Most notably the Japanese mobile telephone companies added them.  They also differentiated between carriers by types and features of supported characters.  That led to incompatibilities between the companies and an incentive to standardize them in Unicode.

Since then, there are other systems that provide emoji outside of Unicode or other mechanisms.  (Like gifs or special codes in messaging software).  So they keep evolving.  

I'm probably skipping other ways these shapes get created that evolve into Unicode emoji.

-Shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Mark E. Shoulson
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2016 3:59 PM
To: unicode at unicode.org
Subject: Re: Manatee emoji?

On 11/23/2016 10:15 AM, James Kass wrote:
> http://patch.com/florida/southtampa/petition-drive-aims-raise-manatee-
> awareness-adorable-way
>
> If enough people sign the petition, will Unicode add a manatee emoji?
> And, how about wolverines and lemmings?  Are any petitions underway 
> for them?  How many signatures on a petition would be needed before 
> Unicode would consider adding a non-existent character to the 
> repertoire?
Aren't many emoji "non-existent[sic]" characters prior to their adoption?

~mark