Stingray Facts

Stingray Profile

Of all the bendy fishes, the flat, flappy ones are probably prone to the highest charisma-to-neglect ratios. Rays are some of the most alien of the vertebrates, and some of the largest, too, with giants of their kind reaching over seven metres across and having larger brains than their pointy, carnivorous relatives. Yet despite their enigmatic qualities, most people aren’t all that interested in cracking their mysteries, and rays are some of the most endangered vertebrates in the ocean as a result.

One group is equally threatened in freshwater, marine, West, East, tropical, subtropical and temperate waters, and, frankly, deserves much better.

This is the only animal bold enough to go up against our species’ champion, Steve Irwin and come out of it unmolested. A fish so grand that it commands a whole horn section intro with explosions and Troy Tempest. Stand by for action! We are about to launch Stingray.

Stingray Facts Overview

Stingrays are ancient cartilaginous fishes, related to sharks. But unlike most sharks, they are flat, gentle, and relatively intelligent, and will only attack when threatened. And when they do, they can do some serious damage, but this damage is nothing compared with the destruction they face in our wake. Stingrays are poorly understood, overly exploited animals that need and totally deserve our help!

Interesting Stingray Facts

1. They’re Cartilaginous Fishes

Our skeletons are made from bone, usually. Sometimes adamantium. But mostly bone. And this is a common strategy for a skeleton when it’s on the inside of the body (Arthropods use a cellulose-like material for their exoskeletons called chitin). But it’s not nearly the earliest or the only enduring strategy.

Before bone, there was cartilage. There still is, but there was, too. And cartilage became bone by way of an evolutionary process that nobody yet understands, but before it did, and before complex life even made it onto land, the oceans were teeming with swimming vertebrates called cartilaginous fishes.

Today, they’re still strong contenders for ocean dominance, and this entire class of animals includes the sharks, the chimaeras, sawfish, skates and the rays. Sharks and rays are the closest relatives within this group and share the subclass Elasmobranchii, with rays filling the superorder Batoidea.

Beneath this tier are the four orders of rays, Myliobatiformes being the one with all the stingrays in it. And sting, they very much can! ¹

2. They pack a punch

The name stingray is 50% mysterious (by word count – 3/8^ths, so by letter count). Rays are characteristically flat animals, and the word comes from the Latin raia, which probably came from some root relating to this shape, but that’s about as far as etymologists can take us in regards to its meaning. The first part, though, is substantially less ambiguous.

Stingrays have a hardened barb in the tail, which is generally serrated and can grow as fast as 2 cm per month if it happens to break off inside someone’s foot. But worse still than being pierced is being envenomated, and the serrations in the stinger itself are basically a set of skin-covered reservoirs for stinging cells, which, as the stinging motion pulls away at the sheath, are released into the victim.

This venom, apparently, hurts. Moreso in freshwater stingrays than in their marine counterparts. There seems to be nothing to support the myth that it makes bleeding worse, and hot water appears to help with the pain, so the venom is possibly a cocktail of very delicate proteins, though even this is contested by the logic that water hot enough to denature these proteins could also damage the surrounding tissue.

So, interestingly, this venom of what is one of the most infamous sea creatures hasn’t yet been studied all that well, likely because it’s not super potent, and death from a stingray attack is almost unheard of. ²

3. They’re chilled out

Another reason stingrays don’t kill many people is that they’re generally very calm animals, and most injuries are the result of a person stepping on one.

Stingrays use their attack only in rare moments of panic, and will flick a powerful strike upwards and often repeatedly when they do.

Barbs can be pulled out, shearing significant wounds into the attacker, or sometimes can be stuck inside and eventually snap off. But in general, stingrays are well known to be gentle animals to be around, as long as you don’t try to handle them.

4. They’re diverse

Stingrays are surprisingly common in various watery habitats. The majority are marine, but there are freshwater ones, too, including some absolute giants like the Mekong River ray that grows to more than 2 metres across and lives in the muddy waters of the Mekong.

Marine stingrays are mostly bottom-dwellers too, but dwell in all sorts of bottoms while doing it. And then there are pelagic rays, too, like the appropriately-named pelagic stingray, who spend most, if not all, of their time flapping about in the open ocean and wouldn’t be seen dead hiding in the sediment.

There are around 220 species of stingray described, in around 30 genera, ranging from 18cm long to over 2 metres and, like most beautiful, gentle and charismatic aquatic animals, they’re being steadily wiped out by the fishing industry and human development. ³

5. They’re powerful

Many species of rays, including the pelagic ray, migrate long distances and often in large groups. They may look like a leather dinner plate with a tail, but their fins are well-suited to moving through water efficiently, and they can be fast when they need to be, too.

Dasyatidae is a family of stingrays that includes the pelagic rays, many sediment-dwellers and many freshwater species, too, found all over the world, in Africa, Asia, and Australia. This family alone has tens of species listed in the conservation categories of Vulnerable to Critically Endangered, almost all of which are facing the same pressures.

Overfishing is devastating many populations, and rays are particularly vulnerable on account of them being mostly coastal and capable of being caught by almost all styles of fishing. They are caught as bycatch, but also directly for food, and fish markets in Asia are commonly packed with species that are already dangerously close to extinction.

The Chinese Stingray, the Porcupine ray in India, and the Colares Stingray in South America are just three critically endangered species picked at random from the list, all subject to the same issues and all overwhelmingly neglected by conservation enforcement.

Fish as a whole, and cartilaginous fishes in particular, suffer from a lack of relatability to common folk that would not be present if these animals were fluffy tigers or pandas being sold for food and medicine on the side of the road, and stingrays are some of the most affected in this regard. ^{4 5 6}

Stingray Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

1. , “Myliobatiformes”, ScienceDirect.
2. Charnigo et. al (2023), “Stingray Sting”, National Library of Medicine.
3. Weinheimer et. al (2021), “Dasyatidae”, Animal Diversity Web.
4. (2021), “Marbled Whipray”, IUCN Red List.
5. (2019), “Chinese Stingray”,IUCN Red List.
6. (2019), “Colares Stingray”, IUCN Red List.