Cowtail stingray

A spring tail stingray at Marsa Alam in the Red Sea.

The Feathertail stingray ( Pastinachus sephen ) is a Stechrochenart that lives in many parts of the Indo-Pacific from the Red Sea and South Africa in the West and the East China Sea, Melanesia and the Arafura Sea to the east.

Features

Sephen Pastinachus has a diamond-shaped, very thick for stingrays pectoral fin disk, which is slightly longer than it is wide and has a strong rounded muzzle. The tail is almost twice as long as the body and carries the typical for the family one to two venomous spines on the top, about one-third from the base of the tail and thus relatively far behind. An upper fold of skin is missing, however, the lower is strong. It starts even before the sting, and has two to three times the width of the actual tail. The top is uniformly gray-brown to black, the bottom almost completely white with a narrow dark border. The animals reached a total length of up to three meters with a weight of 250 kg.

Way of life

Feathertail stingray live in the shallow waters of the intertidal zone to depths of 50 meters. Since they are very tolerant of the salinity of the water, they can travel up rivers in far ( in the Ganges up to 1600 km). The rays usually hunt alone in lagoons before and on reefs. Their prey consists of bony fish (eg pony fish or sole ), Vielborstern, shrimp and mussels. She herself being chased by sharks and porpoises. If they do not chase, they like to keep themselves in smaller groups on sandy seabed, where they dig into a circle so that each ray is looking in a different direction in order to be protected from enemies. Like all stingrays they are ovoviviparous, giving birth, the disc of the boys measures about 18 cm.