Stingray - Master of Disguise

The Great Barrier Reef in the western Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Queensland, Australia is the largest coral reef in the world. It is also home to the stingray, a ‘camera-shy’ denizen which has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons.

With a striking resemblance to the Stealth Fighter, this dark beauty glides like an hovercraft over the seabed by gently flapping its wing-like modified fins.

It spends most of its time at the bottom of the ocean because unlike most other fish, it does not have a swim bladder and therefore cannot float. As a result, it sinks to the seabed when it stops moving its fins.

The stingray uses the contrasting coloration of its skin to its advantage both, as predator and as prey!

When it lies prone on the seabed, its dark, mottled back merges with the murky background. At other times, it covers itself with a thin layer of sand by undulating its sides, making itself almost invisible.

When the stingray swims up to the surface, its light-colored belly provides perfect camouflage against the bright light that streams into the water from above.

Once a stingray has zeroed in on its prey, it uses its flattened body not only to trap it against the seabed but also to guide the prey to its mouth by undulating the edges of its body.

It uses the mottles on its back to advertise its venomous defenses, thus warning off predators like sharks and humans.

Like they say, ‘the sting is in the tail!’ The cartilaginous spine of the stingray runs along the body to form a tail with a sting at the base, with two venom-filled grooves underneath. When the ray lashes out at a victim, the delicate tail skin ruptures on impact, releasing the poison.

Most rays are gentle, only raising their tails in warning but some long-tailed rays attack if startled. Sadly, this is what happened out there on the Great Barrier Reef on the 4th of September 2006, when a ‘camera-toting’ denizen of Australia inadvertently swam over an inconspicuous ray.

With lightening-speed, the ray struck, its poisonous spine piercing the heart of Animal Planet’s first citizen and one of planet Earth’s greatest lovers of wildlife - Steve Irwin.

Copyright © 2006 Noël Gama