http://www.LouisianaSportsman.com April 2015 | Louisiana Sportsman 183
months after mating.
Southern stingrays are ovoviviparous, which means the
female holds the eggs internally until they hatch. After the
young consume the yolk sac, the mother secretes a protein and
fatty acid-rich liquid called histotroph or uterine milk to nour-
ish the young rays until birth.
Southern stingrays are bottom creatures, and can be found
from shallow, inshore lakes and bays out to 170 feet of water.
They prefer soft or sandy bottoms, in which they will often bury
themselves enough to break their outline.
Their eyes are set high on their humped head, so even if bur-
ied they can remain alert for predators or prey.
They breathe by sucking water into their spiracles — large
holes also located high on the head and right behind each
eye. After the water passes over the ray’s gills, it is forced out
through the gill slits on the underside of the animal.
The spiracle and gill arrangement also play an important part
in their feeding technique, called hydraulic mining. Powerful
jets of water from their gill slits blow bottom sediment away,
exposing the smaller creatures that live in it. They will also vig-
orously flap their wing-like pectoral fins to disturb the bottom.
Southern stingrays are not feeding specialists, instead eating
a wide range of foods including fish, worms, crabs, clams and
many kinds of shrimp. The feeding behavior of southern sting-
rays attracts followers that pick off creatures disturbed by the
hunting activity of rays.
Many species of fish, including several kinds of jacks, follow
feeding rays. Also documented are cormorants that dive into
the water and swim behind the rays.
Feeding is done day and night, although it seems to be more
vigorous at night.
The rays detect their prey by smell, and use their lateral lines
to detect vibrations from prey movements. Also important are
thousands of electroreceptors called ampullae of Lorenzini.
Located on the rays’ underside, they sense electrical fields
given off by buried prey.
The most-serious predator of southern stingrays is the ham-
merhead shark. It is thought that the shape of this shark’s head
is an adaptation that assists in holding these large rays down
while the shark feeds on them.
Humans are not a predator of southern stingrays, in spite of
all the idiotic blather of uncredentialed pseudo-experts on the
internet who claim to have inside knowledge that plugs of flesh
are taken from stingrays’ wings and sold as scallops.
To call this modern urban legend preposterous is to dignify it.
Using any cookie-cutter type of device to punch through a ray
fin is incredibly difficult. Sandwiched between a top and bot-
tom muscle layer in each wing is a very tough layer of inedible
(and unchewable) cartilage.
Additionally, the muscle fibers of a scallop run from top to bot-
tom — from flat side to flat side. The muscle fibers of ray fins
run horizontally to allow the ray to swim by flapping its wings.
Even if a plug could be cleanly punched from the wing and
the cartilage layer somehow magically disposed of, the muscle
fibers running the wrong way would be a dead giveaway that
what is in a person’s mouth is not a scallop.
By the way, stingray wings are good to eat if one takes the time
to skin the wings and fillet the top and bottom meat layers off
the cartilage. The meat is sweet and white. ■creature feature continued
creature
feature
continued198DLX178DLV2180DLX36440 Old Bayou Liberty Rd • Slidell, LA • 985-649-4412slidell marine
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