[Animals] Discover the wild (and very long) mating ritual of these 122 devil rays

[FNX Magokiler]

Splashes on the surface indicate the commotion occurring below. Beneath the waves, a tornado of hundreds of devil rays swirls in a dizzying dance that lasts for hours.

This is a "courtship vortex": a previously undescribed behavior among Munk's devil mantas (Mobula munkiana) that has now been recorded in a study by the non-profit conservation organization Manta Trust. New drone footage shows 122 individuals participating in this five-hour display in Baja California, Mexico, with different mating groups entering and leaving the main formation over time.

"It's amazing to see a vortex of Mobulas," says Marta D. Palacios, co-founder of Mobula Conservation, whose study examines the courtship and mating behaviors of three mobula species: the spiny ray, the bentfin ray, and the munk devil ray.

Mobulas were known to form vortices when feeding or resting, but this is the first time vortices have been observed in a mating context. The circling movement was more relaxed: the rays touched each other and did not deploy their cephalic fins (the horn-shaped appendages in front of their faces) to eat. The researchers also saw courtship trains (when male mobula rays chase a female to try to mate with her) moving in and out of the larger vortex.

 

 

This behavior provides the rays with a faster way to select a mate, explains Palacios. "If you're in a courtship train, you have to chase the same female for hours or even days," but in the vortex males can choose their best mate from 30 or 40 females.

"We know very little about mobula rays," says Stephanie Venables, a scientist at the Marine Megafauna Foundation, who was not involved in the study: "Reproductive behavior is one of the most important aspects of their life history to understand, so that these findings will be really important for protection."

horseback riding
The study also describes another new behavior, called "horse jumping," in which the male leading the chase in a courtship train jumps on top of the female, raises his tail and begins to rapidly push his clipper or reproductive organ.

This happened to one female more than 135 times. "Imagine you're swimming on the surface and someone jumps on you from behind over and over again," Palacios says.

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.es/animales/2023/11/rayas-diablo-ritual-apareamiento-salvaje-larguisimo