One of my absolute favorite things I get to do as a volunteer at MOTE is watch the skate (atlantic guitarfish) and rays and talk to guests about them. Its difficult to avoid anthropomorphizing these adorable creatures. The skate seems particularly charismatic and spends most of his time swimming around the edge of the enclosure poking his nose up as though asking for attention and then holding surprisingly still when crowds of children and adults gently touch his back.
When the skate isn’t charming the guests, he’s following along behind the rays. Recently, I was startled by big splashing and movement in the enclosure. At first I worried that someone had accidentally hurt one of the animals, but when I looked over, I saw only the cownose rays and the skate quickly swimming on opposite directions.
I watched closely for the rest of my time at that station and finally saw what was happening; the skate tried to swim underneath a cownose ray causing the ray to freak out and throw a huge splashy fit. Once I saw this happen I knew what to look for and started seeing when the skate was being particularly annoying to the rays and could almost predict when the rays would start splashing and swimming in the opposite direction trying to get away from the skate.
I almost managed to catch this on video (below) but the ray gives the skate a whack and veers off immediately.
It’s not hard to see why the rays make a big splashy fuss, I wouldn’t want someone swimming underneath me in such shallow water either. However, this left me wondering about the skate’s behavior. Why does the skate follow the rays? Why does he keep trying to swim underneath them?
Maybe he’s checking for food he thinks the rays might have found. Or maybe it’s an instinctual urge to hide by swimming under a larger benign creature and the water just happens to be too shallow for that. Or maybe he really is a mischievous little prankster who loves to tweak the rays noses for fun.
I have yet to find any information that could help answer this question, but I’ll be sure to post an update if I do!
Erica Lauer Vose 