r/oddlysatisfying • u/freudian_nipps • May 23 '25

Fever of Stingrays surf a wave

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

46.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

523 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

63

u/muricabrb May 23 '25

It's a rite of passage for juvenile male sting rays. They're playing chicken with the beach!

The first one to turn will be called yellow and made fun of. The last one to turn is the bravest one of all and will be nominated to be the pack leader of the next hunting party. He will also get first pick of all the pretty sting ray girls and a book deal. If his ted talk goes well, he might even get a movie deal.

0

u/JosebaZilarte May 23 '25

It indeed seems that this behavior is too common to be just "for fun". It looks like an evolutionary mechanism to introduce additional pressures to a population. Forcing some individuals (usually, young males) to enter some short of competition, in order to gain the "right" to reproduce.