Stingray

True Wild Life | Stingray | The stingray is a flat marine fish found in warmer waters around the globe. The stingray is belongs to the same group of fish as other ray and are also believed to be closely related to sharks. The stingray inhabits the warmer tropical waters around the world generally in the slightly deeper waters rather than the shallows. When the weather begins to cool, the stingray will retreat further into the depths of the ocean.

The stingray is most well known for the stinger that is present on the end of tail of the stingray. The stingray uses the stinger on the end of it's long tail pierce through and stop it's prey before it can escape. The stingray's stinger is razor-sharp, barbed or serrated and attached to the stingray's thin tail. This means the stingray can whip it's stinger to pretty much anywhere, extremely quickly as the long, thin tail of the stingray is extremely agile and very flexible.

The size of a sting really is dependent on what species of stingray it is. Some species of stingray in the deep ocean get up to 14ft long including the tail and these species of stingray naturally have a larger stinger. The smaller stingray species tend to have small stingers, so that the stinger is relevant to the size of the body of the stingray. The stingray is a carnivorous animal, meaning that the stingray only feeds on other animals and does not eat plants. The stingray preys on a wide variety of species in the sea including crabs, molluscs, clams, oysters, snails and some species of fish.

The stingray has few natural predators in it's natural environment mainly due to the large size of the stingray. Stingrays are also able to use their flattened body shape to their advantage by resting on the sea floor and therefore able to hide from predators as well as keep an eye out for potential prey. The main predators of the stingrays are sharks, seals, sea lions and large species of carnivorous fish along with humans.

Stingrays breed during the winter and the female stingray gives birth to live young usually between 5 and 15 baby stingrays, known as a litter. The baby stingrays develop inside the mother stingray for around 9 months and feed off the remaining yolk in their eggs sacks. When this runs out, the baby stingrays are feed milk in the uterus of the female stingray. When the baby stingrays are born, they are able to swim about and begin hunting with their mother.

Flounder

True Wild Life | Flounder | The flounder is a species of flatfish that is found in the coastal waters of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Flounder are found hiding on the ocean floor at depths from shallow coral reefs to the deepest trench on Earth. There are five different species of flounder found in the oceans, and only one of these flounder species (the Japanese flounder) is found in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The summer flounder, the winter flounder and the southern flounder are all found in the western Atlantic Ocean, while the European flounder is found in the colder waters around Northern Europe.

All five flounder species are very similar in appearance but can vary quite dramatically in size. Flounder can vary from 5 to 25 inches in size depending on the species, but all flounder species have a rounded, flattened body shape with a medium-sized flat tail fin. The colours and markings of the flounder are dependant on the flounder species, although all five flounder species have adapted to life in the sand on the sea floor and they are often coloured to be camouflaged into their silty surroundings.

Flounder are carnivorous and highly predatory animals. The flounder hides on the sand on the sea floor waiting for potential prey, which the flounder ambushes once it has been spotted. Flounder prey on a variety of bottom-dwelling marine species including small fish, shrimp and crabs. Due to the secretive nature and good camouflage of the flounder, it rarely spotted by predators. Large fish, sharks, eels, humans, and marine mammals all prey on the flounder when it can be spotted.

Rather than laying her eggs onto an inanimate object or the leaf of a plant, female flounders release them into the water at the time time as the male flounders release their sperm (this form of fertilisation is known as spawning). Once the eggs have been fertilised, the flounder fry begin emerging from them in just a couple of weeks.