40 Fun Facts About Stingrays

Which TV wildlife presenter died in 2006 when a stingray barb pierced his chest on the Great Barrier Reef?

Steve Irwin was filming a documentary called Ocean's Deadliest at the time. Fatal stings are so rare that his was only the second recorded in Australia since 1945.

In Greek myth, which hero of the Trojan War was killed by a spear tipped with a stingray spine?

Odysseus was accidentally killed by Telegonus, his own son by the sorceress Circe. The death fulfilled a prophecy that his end would come out of the sea.

What do lifeguards and doctors use to ease the pain of a stingray wound, often by soaking the limb?

Hot water has been shown to ease the pain of a sting, yet nobody is sure why. The old idea that heat destroys the venom has been questioned.

Like their cousins the sharks, stingrays have no bones; what flexible tissue forms a stingray's skeleton instead?

Cartilage, the same material you can feel in the tip of your nose, supports a stingray's whole body. That places rays beside sharks rather than among the bony fish.

Stingray City, where tourists wade among dozens of wild stingrays on sandbars, lies in which Caribbean territory?

The Cayman Islands attraction sits in the North Sound of Grand Cayman, where visitors can pet and interact with wild southern stingrays.

A 300 kg stingray caught in 2022 set the record for a purely freshwater fish; which Asian river did it come from?

The Mekong giant measured almost four metres long and 2.2 metres wide. Giant freshwater stingrays are the widest freshwater fish in the world.

In which 2003 Pixar film is a spotted eagle ray called Mr. Ray the young hero's schoolteacher?

Finding Nemo gave Mr. Ray the voice of Bob Peterson, who also co-wrote the film. Eagle rays belong to the same order of fishes as stingrays.

Which American sports car wore the Sting Ray name from 1963, the only year its coupe had a split rear window?

Chevrolet Corvette styling chief Bill Mitchell borrowed the name from his own 1959 racing car. The split window lasted a single model year.

Stingrays find hidden prey with sense organs near the mouth called ampullae of Lorenzini; what do these organs detect?

Electric fields given off by living animals betray prey a stingray cannot see, because its eyes sit on top of its body and its mouth underneath.

Which shark is such a keen stingray hunter that one was found with 96 barbs lodged in and around its mouth?

The great hammerhead pins a ray to the seabed with its wide head before biting. The venomous spines stuck in its mouth do not seem to bother it.

A female stingray gives birth to a litter of fully formed young; what are newborn stingrays called?

Pups arrive able to swim, feed and defend themselves, so most leave their mother straight after birth.

Lions form a pride and crows a murder; which collective noun is used for a group of stingrays?

A fever is the collective noun listed for stingrays. Their shark relatives get an equally uneasy one: a shiver.

Waders are told to do what with their feet so that a buried stingray feels the approach and swims off?

Shuffle them along the bottom and the vibrations warn a buried ray to swim off. Aquariums call the move the stingray shuffle.

A buried stingray cannot breathe through its mouth; which openings behind the eyes take in clean water instead?

Spiracles draw in sediment-free water and send it straight to the gills. They move less water than the mouth, but enough for a ray lying in ambush.

Most fish push themselves along with the tail, but which body parts do stingrays ripple or flap to swim?

Pectoral fins do the work: seabed species send waves rippling along short, thick fins, while faster open-water rays flap long, thin ones.

Which flat relatives of stingrays lay the leathery egg cases that beachcombers call mermaid's purses?

Skates are the only rays that lay eggs. Stingrays instead give birth to live young, one of the surest ways to tell the two groups apart.

The river stingray family, among the most feared freshwater fishes where it lives, is native to which region?

South America has dozens of river stingray species, with the richest variety in the Amazon basin. Their stings are highly painful and occasionally fatal.

Which bicycle maker launched the Sting-Ray in 1963, a wheelie bike with a banana seat and ape-hanger handlebars?

Schwinn designer Al Fritz based it on a youth craze for bicycles dressed up like chopper motorcycles. The Sting-Ray reached the public in June 1963.

The Music Man StingRay, co-designed by Leo Fender and released in 1976, is a celebrated model of which instrument?

Electric bass players in funk and disco were among the first to take up the StingRay, whose active electronics were considered revolutionary.

Which marine mammals, known to prey on stingrays off New Zealand, pin seabed rays and carry them to the surface?

Killer whales there count eagle rays and both long-tail and short-tail stingrays among their important prey, along with several kinds of shark.

Which US state's St. Johns River holds North America's only permanent freshwater population of stingrays?

Florida's river-dwelling Atlantic stingrays can still survive in salt water, because their ancestors moved inland less than a million years ago.

The round stingray stings hundreds of bathers a year, most notoriously at Seal Beach's 'Ray Bay' in which US state?

California bathers are stung when they accidentally step on the fish, and the northern end of Seal Beach doubles as a round stingray nursery.

The ribbontail ray, the stingray most often sold for home aquariums, is covered in bright spots of which colour?

Blue spots, neon bright on a yellowish background, make this reef ray easy to recognise. A pair of stripes in the same shade runs along its tail.

The dark purple stingray Pteroplatytrygon violacea spends almost its whole life in which habitat?

The open ocean is home to this one stingray, which swims by flapping rather than rippling its disc and stays within about 100 metres of the surface.

Fossils of Heliobatis, a freshwater stingray from the Eocene epoch, come mainly from Fossil Lake in which US state?

Wyoming's Green River Formation has yielded just two kinds of fossil ray, and the second was not recognised and described until 2004.

Which ancient people pierced themselves with stingray spines in rituals meant to give blood back to the gods?

The Maya believed the offering kept the universe in order. One woman, laid in what is called the Queen's Tomb at El Perú, was buried with a ceremonial spine.

Which English captain in 17th-century Virginia was stung so badly at Stingray Point that he arranged for his own burial?

John Smith recovered by evening, well enough to dine on the ray that had stung him. The point on Chesapeake Bay has carried the name ever since.

Samegawa, the pebbly skin of a ray, traditionally covers which part of a Japanese katana beneath the cord wrapping?

The hilt needed a hard, rough surface so that the braided cord could not slide during use, and nubbly ray skin did the job.

Police surveillance devices sold under the StingRay name track mobile phones by imitating which network equipment?

A cell tower is what the box pretends to be, which forces every mobile phone nearby to connect to it and hand over its identity.

In Gerry Anderson's 1964 puppet series Stingray, the title craft piloted by Captain Troy Tempest is what kind of vessel?

A submarine, and a nuclear-powered one, Stingray polices the oceans of the 2060s. The show was the first British TV series to be made entirely in colour.

Which plankton-filtering giants, the largest of the stingray order, can span seven metres from wingtip to wingtip?

Manta rays evolved from bottom-dwelling stingrays, and the giant oceanic species still carries a vestigial remnant of a sting barb.

Unborn stingrays have no placenta, so what does the mother secrete to feed them once their yolk runs out?

Uterine milk takes over when the yolk sac is spent. A round stingray embryo starts feeding on it at about 45 days.

Hexatrygon bickelli, a flabby deep-sea stingray described only in 1980, is unique among rays for an extra pair of what?

Gill slits come in five pairs on every other ray, which is why this heavy-bodied species is known as the sixgill stingray.

The jaws of many stingrays are lined with large, flat plates rather than pointed fangs; what are the plates used for?

Crushing shells of clams, oysters and mussels is their job, and the plates are regularly shed and replaced.

Scientists filmed the ocellate river stingray doing what to insect larvae, a skill once thought unique to mammals?

Chewing them is how these freshwater stingrays break down the tough exoskeletons of insects, with jaw motions much like a mammal's.

A 2022 study gave the first evidence of wild stingrays deliberately producing what when people came close?

Clicking sounds came in short bursts from mangrove whiprays and a cowtail stingray, starting as an observer drew near and stopping once the person backed away.

In Singapore and Malaysia, charcoal-grilled stingray is commonly served with which spicy chilli sauce?

Sambal is the usual partner for the grilled fish. Cooks prize a stingray's wings, cheeks and liver, and find the rest too rubbery.

The stingrays of Stingray City are thought to have first gathered for scraps thrown overboard by whom?

Fishermen cleaning their catch in the calm water behind the reef threw the guts overboard, and the rays learned to gather for the feast.

Atlantic stingrays that swim far up rivers in the southern United States may be eaten by which large reptiles?

American alligators prey on the rays in fresh water, where the stingrays are also pestered by a louse that feeds on their skin mucus.

A round stingray does what with its venomous tail barb every year?

Sheds and regrows it: the old barb drops away and a replacement grows in, so a ray that loses its weapon is not unarmed for good.