If you love the ocean and sea animals, you’ll love SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. It is the best theme park in the UAE for marine life education and exploration. It is the largest indoor marine life theme park in the world, with eight realms, multiple habitats, and the region’s largest multi-species marine-life aquarium.
SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi engages visitors, promotes the love for sea animals, and rallies people around the cause of marine life preservation through various strategies. These include:
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Theme park rides, like the Manta Coaster (17 airtime moments and a zero-gravity flip)- Interactive experiences, like feeding sea lions
- One-of-a-kind animal encounters, including SeaDive and the SeaVenture underwater walking tour
- Stunning observation areas and viewing platforms, including the spectacular 20-meter vertical viewing window – i.e., Endless Vista – for viewing the aquarium
There are more than 100,000 animals in SeaWorld Abu Dhabi. Among the most remarkable, and one you should not miss when you visit, are the rays – particularly the manta rays and stingrays.
What Are Rays?
Rays refer to marine animals that belong to the superorder Batoidea. This is why rays are also known as batoids. Batoids include but are not limited to:
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Manta rays- Stingrays
- Electric rays
- Sawfishes
- Skates
Rays are cartilaginous fishes (scientific class: Chondrichthyes) and are thus related to sharks. They are characterized by a slightly or acutely flattened body, so they may look partly or entirely disc-like. They also have wing-like pectoral fins attached to their heads.
How Do Rays Sense Prey?
Rays detect their prey using their senses of smell, sight, and hearing.
Like other fishes, rays have a lateral line system to help them sense pressure changes and disturbances in their surroundings. In rays, this lateral line system is composed of lateral line canals that take in water through tubules that end in pores on the skin of the dorsal (top) and ventral (bottom) surfaces.
Part of the lateral line system in rays has also been modified to detect electrical fields rather than movements and pressure changes. This electroreceptive organ is known as the ampullae of Lorenzini.
Characteristics of Rays
Since there are more than 600 species of rays (classified into more than 20 families), batoids can look vastly different from one another. For instance, some batoids flap their pectoral fins like bird’s wings, so they look like they’re flying instead of swimming in the water. However, some rays swim like sharks. Most rays live in saltwater, but some rays live in freshwater.
There are other characteristic differences among ray species. Tropical and temperate water are the norm among marine rays. Some live in the deep sea, while some prefer shallow coastal waters. Many rays prefer the sea floor, but some hunt in the open ocean.
Rays also vary in size. Some are mere centimeters in width and length, while others are several meters wide and long.
The wide variety of families and species of rays means it can be challenging to document all the batoids’ characteristics and the differences among species. However, below is a comparison between the most well-known batoids: the manta ray and stingray.
Manta Rays and Stingrays
First, note that there are multiple species of manta rays and stingrays.
For instance, manta rays belong to the family Mobulidae, which has one genus: Mobula. The genus Mobula has 11 species, including three manta ray species:
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- Oceanic manta ray, i.e., giant manta ray (Mobula birostris)
- Reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi)
- Caribbean manta ray (Mobula cf. birostris)
Trivia: Devil rays are also mobulids like manta rays. There are more species of devil rays than manta rays.
There are even more stingrays than manta rays. There are hundreds of stingray species, including approximately 70 species of whiptail stingrays (family: Dasyatidae).
Manta Rays vs. Stingrays
What are the general differences between manta rays and stingrays?
Stingrays look more tapered, with a pointed head, a disc (the flat body) that is at most 1.3 times as broad as it is long, and a thin, whip-like tail that is longer than the stingray’s disc width. Manta rays get their name from the Spanish word for cloak or wrap because they look as wide as blankets with their triangular, wing-like pectoral fins and extensive wingspan. The giant manta ray’s wings can grow as wide as 8.8 meters, while reef manta rays have an average wingspan of 3.4 meters.
A manta ray’s mouth is in front of its body (i.e., terminal), while the stingray’s mouth is underneath. Manta rays have distinctly horn-like lobes on their head (i.e., cephalic fins) that help channel plankton-rich waters into their open mouths as they swim. Stingrays don’t have such fins.
However, stingrays have venomous barbs on their tails, which they flick when they feel threatened. The barbs can penetrate your skin and cause bleeding and poisoning. They also have teeth, which they use for chewing on prey. Manta rays don’t have stingers or teeth.
Finally, manta rays are constantly moving because they need water to flow into their gills to breathe. Stingrays can remain immobile and hide under the sand for camouflage, and they can still breathe by using their spiracles (i.e., breathing holes found behind the eyes) to pass water through their gills.
See Rays at SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi
Manta rays and stingrays are two fascinating types of batoids. You can see them at SeaWorld in Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. If you plan to visit SeaWorld, get one of the multi-park theme park deals to enjoy the other theme parks in Yas Island.