18/10/2024
Feathertail Stingray
Absolutely gorgeous and an amazing surprise on our snorkel at Poivre
1. Other common names include banana-tail ray, cowtail stingray, drab stingray, fantail ray, and frill tailed stingray.
2. Females give birth to live young and have 2 pups which are about 0.18m wide at birth.
3. Their eyes are on top of their bodies, and their mouth, gills, and nostrils are on the underside. Because of this they can’t see their prey, instead they use smell and electroreceptor’s (special gel-filled pits across the front of their face) which allow them to pick up electrical signals from other animals when they move to find food.
4. Diet: consists of bony fish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Juveniles mainly feed on bivalve molluscs.
5. Size: they get up to 2m wide and can weigh up to 10kg.
6. They are brown / grey with a diamond-shaped body and a distinctive feather shape to the tip of their tail.
7. They have large venomous serrated spines behind their pelvic fins.
8. Their lifespan is assumed to be more than 25yrs.
9. They have no bones, their skeleton is made up of flexible cartilage.
10. Their natural predators are sharks, seals, sea lions and other large fish.
11. They are generally found in shallow coastal waters on sandy bottoms or coral reefs up to 60m. They have been known to enter estuaries and rivers meaning they are amphidromous (freshwater and sea).
12. They are classified as threatened due to overfishing, habitat loss and climate change.
