Critically Endangered
Common eagle ray
Myliobatis aquila
Common eagle ray is an eagle ray in the family Myliobatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Myliobatis aquila, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The common eagle ray reaches up to 183 cm (6.0 ft) in total length with a disc width up to 80 cm (2.6 ft), though most specimens are smaller. The dorsal surface is brown or black while the ventral surface is white. The blunt snout is rounded and the tail is long and slender, with a large spine at its base but no tail fin.
The spine makes about 70% of the male's length and 65% of the female's length.
Range and habitat
This species occurs in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, among them the North Sea, from the British Isles to South Africa, extending to the Indian Ocean. It is also found in the Mediterranean Sea. It occurs both close to the shore and further out, at depths down to about 800 m (2,600 ft), but much of its time is spent in shallower water at less than 50 m (160 ft).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Benthic invertebrates form an important part of the common eagle ray's diet. Other items in its diet include polychaete worms, gastropod molluscs, sea pens and small fish.
Instead of having pointed teeth, it has flattened hexagonal bars and plates arranged in a mosaic pattern on its jaws. With these, it crushes the shells of its prey. A clutch of three to seven young develop inside the mother, receiving nourishment at first from their egg yolks, but later from fluids secreted by their mother into her uterus.
In crisis
Common eagle ray is Critically 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 Common eagle ray, Wikidata item Q926676. 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.
