stingray
The stingray is a relative of the shark, but it does not look like a fish at all. It’s as if a large roller rolled over the poor guy and flattened him, turning him into a huge pancake or colored carpet. Raising and lowering its wing-like pectoral lateral fins in waves, it flies over the bottom like a fairy-tale bird. At the same time, he sees everything perfectly and is even able to detect changes in the electric fields created by living organisms. Here is a flounder lying in the sand, here is a crab making its way past the corals, and oysters are buried nearby. All this can be food for the stingray. A true bottom dweller, he himself is capable of lying on the bottom, dozing or carefully observing the situation. Sprinkled with sand, the stingray becomes completely invisible to an unwary fish swimming past. If someone touches him or tries to offend him, the stingray flaps long tail and... stabs the offender with a poisonous tail spike. This is his weapon in the fight for life. The wound caused by the thorn is very dangerous, and the poison is so strong that it can paralyze the victim! The remains of such spines stick out in the snouts of many sharks.
Like sharks, the stingray has a cartilaginous skeleton. The eyes are located at the top and look like two tubercles. And the mouth and gills are below. When a stingray breathes, water is drawn into the mouth from above, through two squirt holes - holes behind the eyes, and comes out from below - through the gills. The mouth is designed in such a way that it is convenient for them, like a scoop, to pick up prey from the bottom.
The Red Sea is also home to eagle rays, electric rays and giant manta rays(they are also called frilled devils, sea devils or horned devils). The latter weigh about two tons and have a wingspan of more than 6 meters! They are completely harmless, live in the upper layers of the sea, feed on plankton, shrimp, and small fish. Sometimes manta rays jump out of the water and fly 4-5 meters through the air, scaring people. In reality, they are simply trying to stun dense schools of fish, which they then collect. Fearsome horns sea devil- nothing more than head fins. With these blades, the manta creates the direction of the flow of water into the mouth. This is how she breathes and gets food.
Eagle rays (Aetobatus narinari) prefer to swim at medium depths. They have a diamond-shaped body and a whip-like tail with poisonous thorn. The pectoral fins look like the wings of a large bird.
Eagle ray
Electric rays, like stingrays, are bottom dwellers. Their bright colors attract the attention of many divers. However, with these marine life you need to be very careful. After all, with the help of special organs similar to batteries, they are capable of generating and storing electricity. For being too curious, you can be hit with an electric shock of 200-300 volts at two kilowatts of power or more! These organs are located in the front part of the disc-shaped body of the stingray, between the anterior protrusion of the pectoral fin and the head, one on each side. Their outlines are usually clearly visible from the outside on both the ventral and dorsal sides.
Electric Stingray
One of the families of electric stingrays is called "narcos". From Greek name these creatures - narke ("striking", "striking", "leading to numbness") occurred modern term"drug". Servants ancient god Aesculapius's healing methods used the method of shock therapy through contact with a narke stingray ("narcotization") to treat certain diseases. One of the smallest cartilaginous fishes, the Indian fish, belongs to the genus Narke. electric Stingray, reaching a length of 13.5 centimeters. It is found in Indian Ocean, near India, off the coast of Vietnam, China and Southern Japan.
The largest of the electric stingrays is considered to be the black Torpedo nobiliana, which lives in North Atlantic. It reaches 1.8 meters in length and weighs about 100 kilograms. With his electric discharge he is capable of killing any animal that happens to be near him. If one hundred electric lamps are connected in parallel to such a ramp, they will all flare up at once and will flare for three seconds, gradually fading away. One shock lasts three hundredths of a second, but stingrays prefer to give a series of shocks (from 12 to 100) in a continuous burst. Moreover, each new category is weaker than the previous one.
Many stingrays moved to the permanent place residence in large rivers. Yes, he lives in Australia freshwater stingray- saw saw. And in the basin of the great Amazon lives a whole family of stingray potamotrigons. These river stingrays are very calm, small in size, with unusual shape body and bright, “carpet” colors. Today, two varieties of stingrays are widely represented in hobbyist aquariums: motoro (chocolate-colored with yellow spots in a dark border) and histrix (sand color with marble stains). Both in their native rivers grow to a little over a meter, but with home care remain within 30-50 centimeters. It is very interesting to watch such creatures.
"Living carpets" or stingrays." Candidate biological sciences V. KLIMOV.
"Science and Life", No. 5, 2007
http://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/10241/
Every year, information appears in newspapers, television and radio programs about the capture of sharks off the coast of Kamchatka (even directly in Avacha Bay), which usually arouses keen interest among residents of the region. This is not surprising, since, being relatively heat-loving animals, sharks mainly live in subtropical and tropical waters of the oceans. Only some of their types in summer months penetrate into colder areas and appear off the coast of the peninsula. However, paying so much close attention relatively rare cases catching sharks in coastal waters Kamchatka, we often completely forget about their closest relatives - stingrays, which are not only native to the Kamchatka waters, but are also quite diverse and numerous here.
All stingrays living off the coast of Kamchatka belong to the family of ordinary or diamondback stingrays, whose representatives inhabit mainly temperate and cold waters of the seas and oceans. Like sharks, these fish have a cartilaginous skeleton, but are characterized by a wide, flattened, diamond-shaped body (due to their bottom-dwelling lifestyle), usually covered with large spines and numerous small spines. Powerfully developed pectoral fins stingrays merge with the sides of the body, resembling wings. The two dorsal fins, on the contrary, are very small and located at the tip of the tail, while the caudal fin itself is rudimentary or completely absent. When alarmed, stingrays usually press themselves to the ground (often they even bury themselves in the sand, so that only the eyes and part of the back remain on the surface), and their color, like that of flounders, may vary somewhat depending on the color of the surface on which they are located. When stingrays lie on the bottom, their gill slits are pressed tightly to the ground. To prevent them from becoming clogged with silt and sand during the breathing process, stingrays draw in water through holes located on the upper side of the head, called squirters and which are modified nostrils.
Up to 10 species of stingrays are found off the coast of Kamchatka. Among them there are both small ones (such as the purple and Tarants ray) with a length of only 7080 cm with a body weight of 13 kg, and large ones (for example, the deep-sea and Aleutian rays), the dimensions of which reach 130160 cm, and the weight body 1520 kg or more. The life expectancy of small stingrays does not exceed 710 years, while age limit large ones are estimated by experts at 15-18 years. Different types Stingrays inhabit depths from 3050 to 3000 m, although each of them is characterized by its own bathymetric habitat range.
Small stingrays feed mainly on bottom crustaceans (crabs, shrimps), while large ones are predatory. Lifestyle, eating fish and squid. Pursuing their prey, they often rise into the water column, and while swimming they flap their pectoral fins like wings, and, if necessary, move quite quickly. When hunting for prey such as fish or squid, stingrays cannot grab them as a result of a direct attack, since their mouth opening is located on the underside of their head. Therefore, stingrays first swim towards their prey, then press it to the bottom and only then swallow it.
Stingrays also reproduce in a rather unique way. All of them have the so-called “conveyor” method of reproduction, i.e. with the onset of maturity, their females, like ordinary domestic chickens, throughout their entire subsequent lives all year round lay eggs that are constantly in the ovaries at different stages of maturation - from the smallest yolkless to those already ready for hatching. Moreover, each egg is encased in a flexible but durable horny capsule with four processes in the form of “horns” (two on each side), with the help of which it is attached to the ground. The duration of incubation is at least 46 months. The fry that hatch from the eggs are fully formed, but have remnants of the yolk sac, allowing them to get used to external nutrition for some time.
Although currently the domestic fishing industry practically does not use stingrays, in many countries (especially South-East Asia) they serve as objects of specialized fishing and are eaten, often as delicacies. The liver of stingrays, rich in vitamin A, is a raw material for the production of technical fat and the production of various medical preparations. Since the number of these fish in Kamchatka waters is quite large, the volumes of their catch can reach significant values. Moreover, since stingrays rarely form dense clusters, experts consider bottom longlines to be the most effective fishing tool for them. Catching stingrays, on the one hand, would allow for more rational use of stocks bottom fish off the coast of Kamchatka; on the other hand, expand the range of domestic fish products, as well as export stingrays to countries where they are traditional fisheries and in demand.
An incomprehensible creature, shaped like a cigar... another one, Who has a sharp saw instead of a muzzle... another one, whose touch pierces you electric shock...another one, with a spike on its tail, with which it can not only hurt, but also kill you. another one, which rises with a roar from the depths of the sea and again plunges into the depths its huge body, weighing thousands of kilograms and similar in shape to bat. All these stingrays are little-known relatives of the well-known shark.
This younger branch of the Selachia family includes the rays themselves and the creatures that are the link between sharks and rays. Stingrays were first encountered in later geological eras than sharks, but they are also quite respectable in age. The oldest members of this group trace their ancestry back to at least the Upper Jurassic period; in other words, they appeared approximately 130 million years ago52.
Like their closest relatives - sharks - rays are found everywhere - in tropical and polar seas, near the coast and in the depths of the ocean. Some of them have entered freshwater basins. In the course of evolution, hundreds of individual species stingrays, and some of them have developed a unique protective technique that helps them survive in the struggle for existence. But, no matter how different they are from each other, they remain selachians. Essentially, they are nothing more than flattened sharks. They reproduce like sharks, are carnivorous like sharks, and their skeleton consists of cartilage - what distinguishes all selachians from bony fish.
Most stingrays are slow, lethargic inhabitants of the seabed. (But not all. In Indian and Pacific Oceans large ones were discovered pelagic species, about which we know almost nothing.) Life at the bottom determined not only the shape of their body, which was usually flat, but also the way they breathed. If, lying on the bottom, they inhaled water through the gill slits that are located on their stomachs, they would draw in sand along with the water and injure the delicate gill filaments. Therefore, they inhale water through splashes located on the back and equipped with a valve, and exhale it through the gill slits. If some foreign object does get into the spray bottle - sand or a piece of algae - the stingray is not lost here either: it throws out a stream of water through the spray bottle, and with it the foreign object. Stingrays come in a variety of sizes, from dwarf species several tens of centimeters in diameter to a huge stingray, called the giant sea devil (Mania birostris), reaching 7-8 meters in width and weighing about 1500 kilograms.
No species of ray known to us has the sharp teeth that distinguish most sharks. These are either spike-like projections located on a wide base, or rounded plates, usually assembled in mosaic series. This arrangement of the mouth is caused by the fact that the main food of those living on seabed Stingrays are mollusks and crustaceans whose shells must be crushed. Let's move on to a more detailed examination of individual slopes.
They are one of the most ancient fish. They are unique in that they do not use their tail to swim, as other fish do. Stingrays move only due to the movements of their fins, reminiscent of butterflies.
Photo session with stingrays in the Cayman Islands.
Most stingrays live in sea water, however, there are also several freshwater species. (Photo by Bull Press):
Stingrays are characterized by a very “flattened” body and large pectoral fins fused to the head. The mouth, nostrils and five pairs of gills are on the flat and usually light-colored underside. (Photo by Bull Press):
The upper side of stingrays is adapted in color to a particular living space and can vary from light sand to black. (Photo by Bull Press):
Stingrays can be found in different corners our land. They are found even off the coasts and in the Northern Arctic Ocean. (Photo by Bull Press):
The size of stingrays varies from a few centimeters to several meters, and the “wingspan” of some stingrays can be more than 2 meters. (Photo by Bull Press):
One of the most known species One of the most popular stingrays is the Manta Ray, whose wingspan can reach 2.5 meters and length - up to 5 meters! Stingrays from the stingray family are also very large and reach 2.1 meters in width and up to 5.5 meters in length. A relatively large stingray - Catfish- found in Azov and. (Photo by Bull Press):
Stingrays are very ancient fish. They are relatives of sharks, and, moreover, the closest relatives, although there are no external similarities. In terms of internal composition, stingrays, like sharks, consist not of bones, but of cartilage. (Photo by Bull Press):
In ancient times, stingrays were similar to sharks not only internal structure, but also external features. But time has changed them beyond recognition. (Photo by Bull Press):
Most stingrays lead a bottom-dwelling lifestyle and feed on mollusks and crustaceans. (Photo by Bull Press):
Stingrays have a unique respiratory system. If you take other fish, they breathe with gills. However, if the stingray tried to do the same, then along with the air it would also suck in the sand lying at the bottom. That's why stingrays breathe differently. Air enters the stingray's body through special sprays that are located on the back. His eyes are also located there (visible in the photograph). (Photo by Bull Press):
A squad of electric stingrays is endowed with a special “weapon”, which, with the help of a special organ made from transformed muscles, can paralyze prey electrical discharges from 60 to 230 volts and over 30 amperes. (Photo by Bull Press):
By the way, all stingrays can generate electricity, but not to the same extent as the electric stingray. (Photo by Bull Press):
The man reached the stingrays. Their leather is very durable and has an unusual texture, therefore it is used in the leather industry for the manufacture of wallets, belts, bags, briefcases, etc. Stingray wings are a delicacy in Portuguese cuisine. (Photo by Bull Press):
A few more photos from the photo shoot with stingrays in the Cayman Islands. (Photo by Bull Press):
The eyes of a stingray and the breathing holes on the back. (Photo by Bull Press):
(Photo by Bull Press):
(Photo by toshi):
(Photo by Kumukulanui):
(Photo by Jeff Milsteen):
Wonderful. (Photo by Bo Pardau):
When one of these “flies” next to you unusual fish, it makes a lasting impression. Stingrays are real butterflies of the seas and oceans. (Photo by Zanthia):
(Photo by Ken Bondy):
- Many large predators cause a natural feeling in people - fear, but we can easily imagine any animal as a positive hero, just as a bear, lion, wolf and even a crocodile are kind in fairy tales. But never a shark! For humans, this is the embodiment of ruthlessness and mortal danger.
Shark
Shark- SHARKS AND RAYS.
- Sharks are one of the most ancient vertebrates living on Earth, the main features of which were formed hundreds of millions of years before they appeared. primitive people. They are a living monument to such a distant past that it is even difficult for us to imagine.
- Most likely, you have eaten fish often in your life. It’s a shame that the tender meat of pike, carp, perch, cod or herring contains a lot of bones.
- But, if you ever happen to try shark meat, then you will not encounter this problem, because... There are no bones in shark meat at all.
- Sharks, like their relatives stingrays, are cartilaginous fish. They have a skeleton, but it consists only of cartilage.
- Real bones, as in the skeletons of other fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, sharks and rays Dont Have. Ask why? Yes because cartilaginous fish older than teleost animals and their development followed its own independent path and did not lead to the formation of bones.
- According to various estimates, the first cartilaginous fish existed 100 million years earlier than the first dinosaurs appeared.
- Of modern vertebrates, only lobe-finned and lungfishes can compete with cartilaginous fish in terms of ancient origin, but only a few of them remain.
- But sharks and rays still form a thriving and diverse group of more than 600 species.
- They breathe with gills, only unlike ordinary fish they have not one gill opening on each side of the head, but 5 or 6.
- All of them are connected to the oral cavity and work like a pump: water enters oral cavity through the mouth and exits through the gill openings.
- Sharks and rays have two more holes on their heads that other fish do not have - these are squirts, which are involved in the breathing process (especially in rays). Unborn babies also feed through the splashers.
Scat
Scat- REPRODUCTION.
- Sharks and rays never spawn. Shark caviar is something like bird's milk, i.e. something that never happens. Sharks reproduce differently than other fish. Sharks and rays are structured quite primitively: skeleton, digestive, circulatory and nervous system have antediluvian features (this is not surprising if we remember the antiquity of their origin), but the reproduction system is very complex, as they say in the modern world, advanced.
- In some sharks and rays, it is designed in such a way that it resembles the system of the most developed animals on Earth - mammals.
- In ordinary fish, the females lay eggs, the male lays seminal fluid, they unite in water, and after some time larvae appear from the fertilized eggs. In sharks and rays, everything is different: the pelvic fins of males are adapted into a special reproductive organ, which, during mating, helps introduce seminal fluid into the body cavity of the female.
- Fertilization always occurs not outside, but inside a cartilaginous fish.
- All sharks and rays They are divided into oviparous and viviparous.
- In oviparous fish, a substance is produced in the walls of the genital ducts that envelops the maturing eggs.
- This substance hardens and the egg is enclosed in a hard capsule with protrusions or long threads at the corners, which are needed so that the eggs do not float as they have to, but cling to algae or stones. Eggs contain a large number of yolk, which feeds the developing baby.
- U viviparous sharks and stingrays, eggs develop inside the mother's body. At first, the embryos develop due to the yolk, and when it runs out, a special substance comes to the rescue - royal jelly, containing proteins and fats.
- Sometimes baby sharks begin to behave aggressively, eating unfertilized eggs and even their neighboring brothers and sisters. In this struggle, the strongest survive, so it is not surprising that sharks have very few offspring.
- You can find out about the enemies of the shark and its retinue that accompanies everywhere
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