The first manta born in captivity had died. Apparenty, the father abused the baby manta by chasing it around, harassing it and slamming into the little ray, inflicting injuries. No one knows the reason for this behaviour.
Tony Wu | Underwater Photography
Tall tales, miscellaneous musings & occasional images from exotic excursions
-
Flickr
-
Twitter
- @polpich hew hew in reply to polpich 9 hrs ago
-
Recent Posts
FiNS Magazine- Tiger in Fiji 02 Jul 09
- The Next Generation 30 Jun 09
- Save 20% on a Trip to Komodo 29 Jun 09
- DIVE 2009: Asia Pacific Showcase 28 Jun 09
- Code-X 28 Jun 09
- Wetpixel
Sad ending…
The baby didn’t even get to live for a month. Maybe in d wild, male mantas don’t stay together wth the females & babies after birth. Kinda territorial thing…
Sad sad, but let’s hope for more births in captivity & may the keepers study of mantas behaviors better to avoid this incident.
hmmm-
sad to hear! but you sometimes find the same thing in dolphins if the father is within the group - he might attack the calf… a lot of species seem to have such a mechanism - maybe its to ensure that only the fittest survive…
Tony,
FWW, infanticide is found in nature but it is usually associated with a new (out of the group) dominant male wanting to ensure his genes are passed on rather than the former male he replaced. It is hard to imagine that this situation is the same thing. Not only are mantas and their biology not understood well enough to hypothesize, but any behavior displayed in an aqauarium can not be equated to behavior in the wild. Its a bit of a conundrum - keeping wild animals in captivity certainly provides an opportunity for humans to see them which they undoubtedly would not have otherwise, but are the animals they see exhibiting the same behaviors they would display if not in captivity? I daresay the answer is no. The value of wild animals being kept in captivity is NOT worth the price which is being exacted from those animals.
I think this is a case of the father dowant to kena sia suay that he is the first stud manta to produce a pup (or whatever yu call baby mantas) in captivity.
Y’know, like the honour killings you see in some communities in the UK.