The Different Types of Rays
Rays, sharks and skates are cartilaginous marine fishes which are fairly common in tropical coastal waters throughout the entire world. There are fresh water species of stingrays in Asia referred to as Himantura, there is also a fresh water species in Florida known as Dasyatis Sabina - these are also found in Africa. In South America, the typical freshwater rays there are known to be members of another family of stingrays known as Potamotrygonidae which is superficially similar to stingrays. These cartilaginous fish called rays belong to the classification known as Chondrichthyes and have been traced to over 150 million years back to the Jurassic age. They all have one common feature - they do not have bones but have calcified cartilage instead even for vertebrae and the structure is different from actual bone. In fact there is a line of study that surmises that rays actually evolved from sharks.
Rays can have short tails or long and some of them have tails with poison in them which is used on other fish and animals. There are rays of every possible hue and color and they vary in size too from just a few centimeters across to over 20 feet wide. Their weight too can vary from under a pound to over a ton. Most types of rays fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes regarding size and weight. There are around 500 species today. They are discernible by their flat bodies and tails which sort of come out of their bodies while the pectoral fins form a kind of a disc which varies in shape from species to species.
Their diet, the way they live, their activity levels and the way they look and hunt can all be so different for each type of ray. There are so many different kinds of rays. Some of the more known types are the electric ray, the stingray, the eagle ray, the bat ray, the devil ray, the manta ray, etc. Each type of ray has many different types within it as well. For example, the electric ray has a variant called the blind electric ray, the eagle ray has the spotted, banded, mottled and the ornate eagle rays while the sting ray has the sharpnose, the red, brown, blue, shortail and southern to name just a few.
Rays make a fascinating study and there are many today who spend a great part of their lives observing and researching these incredible creatures of the deep. They've been around for millennia and they probably carry with them the genetic memories of ages long since gone.