Endangered
Leopard whipray
Himantura leoparda
Leopard whipray is a stingray in the family Dasyatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Himantura leoparda, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The leading margins are sinuous and converge to a broadly triangular snout. The tip of the snout protrudes as a distinct, pointed lobe. In juveniles the disc is nearly equal in length and width. The five pairs of gill slits are S-shaped.
Range and habitat
Bottom-dwelling in nature, the leopard whipray is found close inshore over soft-bottomed habitats. It is known to occur to a depth of 70 m (230 ft). Reported occurrences of the leopard whipray in the Indian Ocean west of the Andaman Sea, among them Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and South Africa have not been genetically validated and could therefore be misidentifications.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Rays feed on the bottom or in open water depending on the family. Nets and shallow-water fisheries are the usual human contact.
Sharks and rays grow slowly and have few young. A fishery that treats them as bycatch can empty a coastal form.
In crisis
Leopard whipray is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Leopard whipray, Wikidata item Q3015224. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
