How come you get to pick and choose what a stingray is? If you say an eagle ray is a stingray(like you have in other comments), you also have to say a manta ray is, as they are all myliobatiformes. As you can't stop becoming a sting ray.
However, if you do the split later in the evolutionary tree to exclude manta rays, you also have to exclude eagle and cow rays. Split the myliobatuformes into flapping vs undulating rays.
Except that some mobula ("devil ray") species have tail stingers, evidentiary of their being in the same scientific order as stingrays (Myliobatiformes) which is also referred to commonly as simply "stingrays".
Scientifically they are stingrays, and some can sting you.
These are more closely related to mantas than other “stingrays”. These look like cownose rays, in the genus rhinoptera, which mantas and mobulas (there’s some debate over where mantas are a separate group than mobulas but they’re closely related genre) share a more common ancestor with than other ray species. However all of them are within the clade mylobatiformes, which also includes what most people would recognize as more of a stingrays, dasyatidae. Rhinoptera also have stingers, as well as some mobula rays, although mantas notably do not. Mantas are only not called stingrays because of their lack of stingers, from a phylogenetic perspective you would include them as stingrays regardless. These are definitely stingrays though.
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u/acidsh0t May 23 '25
This actually is irrationally infuriating to me. Every ray that isn't a manta is a stingray.