Live Manta Birth in Captivity
Video of the world’s first live birth of a manta in captivity. Healthy baby female, about 1.9 metres across, born at the Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. Video is from a TBS news broadcast. (They appear to have deleted the page with the video)
The video file is 1.7 MB. Click the graphic below and wait for the quicktime file to load.
Note: A few people have had problems viewing the quicktime file. Others have not. I have no idea why. In any case, if you can’t view the embedded file, click below the graphic to download an mp4 file which should play in Quicktime, iTunes and on your iPod.
iPod version (1.7 MB)









18 Jun 07 03:57
AWESOME.
18 Jun 07 05:00
my slow internet..
does it come out like a rolled up newspaper? thats my guess..
18 Jun 07 08:55
Yes, the wings appeared to have been rolled up prior to birth. The length of the pregnancy was also unexpected! Intriguing footage!
18 Jun 07 10:58
Can’t view the video. Problems with the encoding. What is the source URL?
18 Jun 07 11:04
Kent: Looks like TBS has taken down the video from their website. They must clean out their pages every few days. The file is quicktime format (.mov). Try to right click and download to your computer, play with quicktime.
Mike: Yes, like a rolled up newspaper, with a big cloud of afterbirth. Pretty dramatic
19 Jun 07 00:02
amazing birth of manta ray…
Saw on Eric Cheng’s blog which links to Tony Wu’s blog of a Japanese video of the world’s first birth of a manta. I like Eric’s description of it.
Its like she produces a huge turd while swimming, except that the turd then wakes up and swi…
19 Jun 07 15:17
Thanks for the info. I ended up finding it myself and just uploaded it to YouTube…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OIc_px_9xBE
Someone else posted additional video as well.
22 Jun 07 02:03
baby manta has died.
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/20070621_ap_babymantaatjapanaquariumdies.html
22 Dec 07 18:25
Hello Tony I just seen the clip.
a very interesting clip, it seems that the baby was getting the puls of life a few seconds after it shoot out of her mom.
but is that the same one which has been killd afterward from a Male?
very said if so.
thanks for that info.
20 Jul 08 23:21
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings