lautnusantara.com - Ray is a type of fish that have flattened body and is closely related to shark. There are some rays species that often congregate in a large group up to thousands of individuals, but mostly they are solitary animal that live alone. Compared to shark, ray can be easily distinguished by their flat, disk-like body, mouth that mostly on the underside of the body, and five gills opening. Other parts that most distinctive is their large, winglike pectoral fins, which extend along side the head and located on the top of the gill openings. They mostly have a long and slender tail and some species has one or more sharp, venomous spine that can cause painful wounds. The skeleton is not made of bone like other fish, but it made from cartilage which is a tough, fibrous substance that not as hard as a bone.

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Rays are mostly marine animal and found in all oceans. Many of them are slow-moving bottom dweller. Most of the ray species are live on the seafloor and spread through all regions, especially in the coastal waters, but few of them can live in deep waters. Only some species of ray, like the manta rays, live in the open ocean and some can live in freshwater. Manta rays is one of the ray species that feed on plankton and small animals, the others usually eat various fishes and invertebrate even can cause damage in commercially valuable shellfish beds. Most of the rays have developed heavy and rounded teeth to crush the shell of bottom dwelling animals like clams, snails, oysters, and crustaceans. 

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Fertilization is mostly happen internally, the male will introduce sperm into the females by means of special copulatory organ that called clasper. This internal fertilization has some advantage to the rays as it conserves sperm and doesn’t expose eggs to the predator. Some rays will lay the eggs (oviparous), while others is reproduce by ovoviviparous. Rays have relatively long gestation period and they will produce just a few of their young. Therefore, ray growth rate is slow.

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