Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Manta rays are a kind of fish named after the devil. So what kind of fish do manta rays refer to? Why do people often "foolishly distinguish" it from rays and rays?

Wen Jing | Wen Jing

Rays and rays are distant relatives. Rays and rays are closely related to rays (and electric rays, saw rays) and Chondrichthys (chondrofishes also include many familiar sharks. For example, true shark, tiger shark, six Gill shark, mouse shark, beard shark, saw shark, horn shark, etc.), while rays (as well as ray family, six-Gill ray family, deep-water tail ray family, flat ray family) and Xenopodidae belong to the same order. We usually refer to several fishes of the family Lepidoptera as manta rays.

Although there is another family under the order Torpeidae, by and large, we can think of manta rays and rays as close relatives, while they are distantly related to rays.

However, there is also a taxonomic class called Batoidea (also called Stingray), which includes sawing rays, and electric rays. In this way, rays, rays and manta rays are a family again. This causes confusion, so we mainly distinguish them by family names-although they belong to the order Coleoptera, we still call them rays.

Some of the main fishes of the order Coleoptera and skate. Manta rays, manta and Devil Fish talking about Devil Fish, many people will think of the popular song "Manta" and regard manta and devilfish in the lyrics as devil fish. In fact, Manta is the name of a genus under the family Rhinopodidae (manta rays), namely, the genus Rhinolophus (also known as Ghost bat).

There are two species of manta rays: Manta birostris (also known as manta rays) and Manta ehrenbergii (manta rays). Because the two-mouthed manta is famous, it is the largest species in the family, while the Acanthophora manta is a relatively independent species from the double-mouthed manta. As a result, many people think of manta as manta rays.

In fact, in English, devil ray (ray stands for ray general order fishes) usually refers to another genus of fishes of the family Zodidae, that is, Mobula.

Although Manta is only a generic name of the family Lepidopodidae, and devil ray refers to another genus of the family Lepidae, it is customary to use manta and Devil Fish to refer to a variety of manta rays and rays.

The difference between manta rays, rays and rays

Although sawing rays, rays, rays and electric rays belong to the same class, we can see that their evolution is different, their genetic relationship is close or distant, and these families also have the same characteristics. Photo source: Shibuya et al. 2015

The above picture shows several typical species of skate, skate and electric skate, from which we can roughly see the difference between the three.

A common feature of these fish is the nostrils, mouth down, looking at their belly like a big face plate with small "eyes" (actually nostrils) and mouth. In other words, the "cute face" we see in the aquarium could be any of them, so how do you tell them apart?

The skate has a well-developed tail, with obvious dorsal and caudal fins, which can swim by swinging its tail. It looks like "half shark, half devil fish". There are also some rays whose dorsal and caudal fins degenerate and can only swim through body disk fluctuations, which looks like rays, but we can tell by whether there are dorsal fins in the tail, which is relatively obvious.

Rays have a degenerated tail, with spines, and their dorsal and caudal fins degenerate or disappear, and usually swim by means of body disk fluctuations.

The mackerel's tail is extremely degraded, slender as a whip, with or without tail spines, has a small dorsal fin, usually swims by flapping its pectoral fins, and looks like a bird flying on the ocean floor.

Many rays and manta rays have tail spines. Although demon fish are gentle, if they are irritated (such as provoking their children around female devil fish), they will use tail thorns as a defensive weapon. It's not easy to be pricked by this tail thorn.

References:

Shibuya A, Carvalho M R, Zuanon J, et al. The use of pelvic fins for benthic locomotion during foraging behavior in Potamotrygon motoro (Chondrichthyes: Potamotrygonidae) [J]. Zoologia (Curitiba), 2015, 32 (3): 179186.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.