Critically Endangered
Ornate eagle ray
Aetomylaeus vespertilio
Ornate eagle ray is an eagle ray in the family Myliobatidae (order Myliobatiformes) — Aetomylaeus vespertilio, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Ornate eagle ray has a maximum size of around 240 cm (94 in) in disc width and a clearly distinct pattern of reticulate dark lines and rings on its back.
If the extremely long tail is unbroken, it can considerably add to the maximum body length of 4 m (13 ft). It has a generation length of 15 years, and can grow as old as 24 years.
Range and habitat
Despite its wide range, it is rarely observed, and has been suspected to have had a large population decline within the past three generations.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Like other rays, the ornate eagle ray gives birth to live young.
In crisis
It is a predatory cartilaginous fish, preying mostly on small invertebrates, polychaete worms, and some echinoderms. The largest threats are demersal fisheries, that are used frequently in the areas it lives in.
Ornate 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 Ornate eagle ray, Wikidata item Q4550289. 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.
