The Eagle Ray Family – Myliobatidae

There are currently TWO members of the Eagle Ray or Myliobatidae Family, both from the Pacific Ocean, are presented in this website:

FROM THE PACIFIC (2):

The Eagle Ray or Myliobatidae Family is a relatively small family that includes eleven global species that have been placed into two genera, of which five are found in Mexican waters, one in the Atlantic Ocean and four in the Pacific Ocean. Some systematists divide the family into three sub-families, while others treat them as three separate families. In this website, I have elected to treat them as three separate families: Mobulidae, Myliobatidae and Rhinopteridae. In Mexican they are know collectively as águilas marinas.

The Eagle Rays are of moderate to large size fish with strongly depressed bodies flattened into rhomboidal-shaped discs that are wider than they are long. They are gray to dark brown on their dorsal side and off-white on their ventral side; some have dark margins on their discs. Their broad head, trunk, and bluntly pointed pectoral fins form a disc that and can reach up to 2.5 m (8 feet 2 inches) in width. Their head is elevated from the disc and their eyes and spiracles are on the sides and their snout is broad and short projecting well before the disc. Their mouth is straight to slightly arched with teeth that are flattened plates arranged like pavement stones in 1 to 7 series. They have a whip-like tail that is much longer than their disc that has one or two large spines at the base. They have a small dorsal fin at the base of their tail and most have a poisonous serrated spine immediately behind their dorsal fin. They do not have a caudal fin and their pectoral fins are either very small or absent. Many have skin denticles on their dorsal surface.

The Eagle Rays are found in tropical and temperate global waters over the continental and insular shelves. They are active swimmers capable of traveling long distances by flapping their pectoral fins. They can be found at all depths of the water column and normally travel in groups near the bottom. They consume benthic crustaceans and hard shell mollusks. Reproduction is ovoviviparous without a placenta and via lipid histography whereby developing embryos are supplied with protein and lipid-enriched uterine milk by their mothers. Litters of 2 to 6 pups are born live as miniature adults. They are generally too rare to be of interest to most. They date to the Upper Cretaceous Period, 100 million years ago.