Can Animals Recognize Themselves In A Mirror

Common Proper noun :: Manta Rays
Scientific Name :: Manta
Blazon :: Fish
Average Life Span :: upward to fifty years
Size :: Upwards to 29 feet

IUCN Red List Condition :: Vulnerable

Manta rays—highly intelligent and highly threatened—are the largest rays in the world.

The sea creatures live in tropical, subtropical, and temperate ocean waters across the earth. "Manta" means blanket or cloak in Spanish, describing the look of the animals' large, flat, diamond-shaped bodies, which are characterized by triangular pectoral fins. Manta rays take two horn-shaped fins protruding from the front of their heads, which has likewise given them the nickname "devil fish."

For decades, scientists thought there was just one species of manta ray. In 2008, researchers discovered that there are actually two distinct species: the reef manta ray, which tends to live along coastlines in the Indo-Pacific, and the giant oceanic manta ray, which lives in all the world'due south major oceans, spending most of its life far from land.

While the smaller reef manta has an impressive wingspan of about 11 feet wide on boilerplate, the giant oceanic manta ray—the largest species of ray—tin can have a wingspan of up to 29 feet.

Habitat and feeding

Both species of manta ray are filter feeders: they swim with their mouths wide open, cartoon in zooplankton and krill, which they sift through rows of tiny rakes that line their mouths called gill plates. They employ artistic techniques when feeding, often doing repeated somersaults to stay in a single spot that is packed with krill, or chain-feeding—post-obit each other in a circumvolve, mouths open, to create a cyclone effect, trapping food in a spiral.

Giant manta rays live alone or in small groups, typically congregating to feed. They're considered predators and hunt deep below the surface of the sea.

Manta rays make regular visits to cleaning stations—spots on a coral reef where ocean animals go to be cleaned by smaller creatures—where they stay all the same for several minutes while cleaner fish remove parasites and dead skin. Many private manta rays return to the same stations over and over.

Intelligence

Manta rays accept the largest brain-to-size ratio of any cold-blooded fish. Studies accept shown that manta rays may recognize themselves in the mirror, an power indicative of high cognitive part, also shown past dolphins, primates, and elephants.

Studies have too shown that manta rays are able to create mental maps of their environs, through smell and visual cues, indicating highly developed long-term memory.

Reproduction

Female manta rays hit sexual maturity at effectually eight to 10 years former and tend to requite birth once every couple of years, usually to one pup, or occasionally two. Pregnancy lasts about 12 to 13 months and manta rays give nascency to live pups. Babies expect like smaller version of adult manta rays when born and can immediately survive without parental care.

Manta rays can live for l years.

Threats

Both sub-species of manta ray are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. Their greatest threat is overfishing. Because they're long-living and slow to reproduce, localized populations have a difficult fourth dimension billowy back when fished. Manta rays are fished for their meat, and, increasingly, their gill plates. In demand for Chinese medicine, they're said to assistance with everything from increasing blood circulation to curing chickenpox, despite a lack of scientific bear witness. They're also considered past some to exist a delicacy. Thousands of manta rays are killed each year for their plates, in a trade estimated to exist worth $xxx meg.

Since 2011, manta rays have been protected in international waters by the Convention on Migratory Species, an international treaty that protects migrating wild animals. In addition, several countries including Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines, and New Zealand have fishing bans in identify.

In 2014, Indonesia, habitation to the world's largest manta ray fishery, banned fishing and merchandise of the creatures, pointing to a far more lucrative reason to go along them alive: tourism. Swimming with rays, one study estimates, generates so much revenue for local economies that a single ray in a tourist hotspot can generate up to ane million dollars in its lifetime—but is worth only $500 dead.

Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/manta-ray

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