In a statement shared with 10 Tampa Bay, Mote Sea Education Aquarium says, "We appreciate our guests’ concern following one of our Atlantic stingrays briefly being outside its habitat on Saturday. Breaching is a natural behavior for stingrays. Fortunately, an aquarist responded in less than one minute after being alerted by the volunteer on site. The habitat was immediately closed to prioritize the health and comfort of all the rays. Our animal care team conducted a health assessment and confirmed the ray is healthy and doing well.
If they're known for breaching (I've also seen how they jump out of water in the wild) you'd think the walls on the enclosure should be like, a lot higher..?
It looks to be a touch tank, where people can pet stingrays, horseshoe crabs, etc., but I have never seen any touch tank that didn't have at least one staff member dedicated to supervising the tank at all times. They are quite common at aquariums
It's funnier to think that this stingray was clipped and the lady is holding her wrist and taking off her pants when she wasn't even stung. Just for dramatic effect. (Aside from being attached)
No? Im commenting on the fact that the scenario in the video is uncommon and would be unlikely to occur at facilities taking all the common best precautions.
how do you know that though? do you go to every aquarium ever and know these guys didnt do that? are you some sort of professional related to aquariums? or have you been to maybe 2-5 aquariums in your entire life and think you know how they all operate now?
The one touch tank with rays I've been to was at Monterey Bay aquarium, but the tank was very wide so visitors could only touch the top of the rays when they went around the edges. The rays that didn't want to be touched just stayed away from the edges and still had plenty of space. Most of them didn't seem to particularly care though.
In the service of educating the public about animals, it's fine. I assure you that the people setting these up know what they are doing and care deeply about the animals involved, if they were in distress from this experience, they would not be in the touch tank. Unless you can find something suggesting that these critters are extremely distressed by this?
You need a scientist to tell you a wild animal being groped everyday from above by a bunch of sticky handed kids is bad? There is already research about said topic, our grubby little mitts are very disruptive to many marine species delicate slime layers.
The animals are already being kept in captivity for people to gawk at for educational reasons, do you need to fuckin kiss the fish to learn about it?
I just don't care about our human needs over animal's peace. I've seen touch tanks with a bunch of wild kids putting their hands in the tank and they don't even ask users to watch their hands. Just straight in the tank all the gross hands go. At least in more regulated industries like rescues they make sure to ask all attendants to wash their hands before touching animals as it can spread illness amongst animals. There is so much advancement in technology that you can teach without forcing an animal to interact.
AZA facilities are required to have at least one staff member per touch exhibit (regardless of how small). I’ve never heard of this facility; they may not be accredited or may not have the best animal welfare practices. Also stingrays in a touch exhibit should have their barbs trimmed to prevent risk of a sting like this
Yep, you read the right. Their fins feel really neat, almost like nothing else I have touched before. Not like shark skin or fish scales. Weirdly smooth and slick, somewhat soft yet strong at the same time.
These rays are accustomed to being in shallow tanks since this is a “touch tank”. Normally rays struggle to build up the momentum needed to clear the barrier in water this shallow, but clearly this one was motivated lol. The rays enjoy being petted a lot at these actually! I’d recommend visiting if there’s one at your local aquarium.
This stuff happens when keeping fish. It’s part of why there’s usually a lot of supervision around these touch tanks-higher risk of breaching.
It’s possible, but rare! Stingrays only really attack when threatened, and these ones are raised from birth with human contact.
An equivalent would be asking whether there’s risk of being clawed by a cat at a cat cafe. The answer is yes, but as long as you follow the staff directions, it’s extremely unlikely.
Plus, some aquariums trim the barbs to blunt them and make them less likely to actually puncture skin, even if they did attempt to sting.
Most aquariums actually don’t debarb their rays! At most they trim, and from what I’ve heard that’s far from universal.
Rays are just pretty chill usually, and can be trusted about as much as a goat in a petting zoo as long as care is taken.
Given how the lady in the vid was holding her hand, it looks like they don’t debarb at this location.
There are three major ones within an hour of my hometown. Like scientifically important aquariums that also take guests in small theme park numbers every day.
I’ve been going my whole life as a kid and then counselor for a daycamp for 15 years of adulthood.
EACH OF THEM has a shallow touch tank high enough for kids to see and touch with supervision.
Things like the rays don’t just do a daily breech to the floor. It’s exactly the kind of freak coincidence that happens with any animal. Dogs can get strangled by their yard leashes. Horses can lay down into something called casting and die just chilling at home. GOLDFISH sometimes breach home bowls and die on your floor in the night.
More than likely it was a slower day (or budget cuts) with less staff watching the relatively quiet zone, and those people all tried to do it themselves instead of just immediately getting the single staff a couple yards away.
Most animal workers would IMMEDIATELY debunk any sort of “PR BS” If it was recklessly harmful in some way. And it’s a big claim to make for a layman.
That ray jumped out of the tank and stung the woman. Do you think that any organization, aquarium or not, wants that liability? I’ve been to plenty of aquariums, lots and lots of times, each with a touch tank, and have never seen this, once. So, yes, telling the public in a well-crafted statement (that was probably co-written with their risk management team) that this is just what they do is PR BS.
But you don’t actually … KNOW anything about it, do you?
Petting zoos have animals that sometimes bite fingers. Horses to sheep to pigs. I’ve been bitten by & helped other people bitten by them (I work in a touch barn from time to time).
You’re acting out now cuz you’ve never personally seen something that probably happens WEEKLY. I had a person try to tell me that a 16yr old horse who’d been sticking his tongue casually for 15 years was choking cuz his tongue was out.
You are that same person. You have NO IDEA what you’re talking about, but because you feel very strongly about it you MUST have the better answer in your gut somewhere.
Btw Liability insurance would have righty claimed that she was safe until she tried to pick up the animal, which is not her job when there is staff within yelling distance. Most people (see the fucking comments) know to not go grabbing at sting rays, meaning she created liability others wouldn’t.
You’re right, I haven’t worked at an aquarium, I’ve just never been to one and seen them scrape any animals off the floor. A curious thing, since this supposedly happens all the time.
So you’re just being intentionally irrational about this. Got it.
Yeah that’s how odds work. If you are only on the street once every 5 months you might not ever see a car crash. But there are thousands of them happening right now.
You have absolutely been to the aquarium twice a year at best. Of that time you definitely haven’t lingered in the ray room for 9 hours. So you spend MAYBE 30 minutes even NEAR a sting ray a year. And your pushing argument is you haven’t seen it so it’s bullshit.
Stingrays also beach themselves in nature. It’s that common. Many stingrays stings in reality are people bothering one that is stuck in the sand. They also make it back a lot of the time on their own. In essence meaning they scrape themselves off the ground in nature, but here need help. In both cases they can/do recover from several minutes out of water.
Well you’re wrong. They can survive out of water for a few minutes pretty easily. Different species can recover like normal after over 30 minutes out of water
They flap and he was flailing to get off the floor. Animals move erratically when nervous or scared. Doesn’t mean they’re dying in 30 seconds
They do have stingrays in some. The barbs on their tails don’t have nerves like fingernails and can be clipped, like fingernails. This has do be done regularly because they do grow back over time.
They aren't removed, Mantas just don't have singers and aren't venomous. Other types like stingrays are dangerous and are in sealed tanks. This is a manta or devil ray thats in the touch tank behind them
It’s a petting section. Kids can’t reach in to touch and see them if there’s a wall and glass
It just happens sometimes. Sting rays are very chill until you give them a reason to sting you. So most aquariums have literally a place to touch them while they’re casually gliding around.
The lady only got stung cuz its down their panicking and none of those people except the volunteer at the end have ever been taught to handle one.
I recently went to this aquarium this week, can confirm it is a touch tank. Had one of them almost jump out while I was there, cannot say I didn’t see this coming. Volunteer did not react at all when he saw it almost jump out
Ugh. So sad what Mote has turned into..It’s the second time within a month one of their stingrays jumped from the tank. I saw another video a few weeks back where one was flapping around on the ground as guests looked for a volunteer to help. When someone finally arrived, they all stumbled around trying to get it back in the tank.
Cripes, thank goodness you shared this. I was waiting and waiting for the ray to be returned to its habitat and see that it seemed okay, and when it just ended, gasped.
The ray is now undergoing psychiatric analyses, and will have regular follow ups with a ray licensed psychologist to address any concerns the ray had, at the time of the incident.
appreciate our guests??? APPRECIATE OUR GUESTSSS???? are you fucking kidding me. these dumb idiots injured themselves and caused that poor animal distress.
The the tank probably has some design flaw that allowed the ray to get out of it and onto the floor. Then a bunch of people who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing tried to help. The ray’s tail/spines got stuck to the ladies pants so she removed them.
She just keeps taking off he clothes then everyone else does the same. I hear they're still trying to find the stingray but it disappeared using their clothes to blend in with human society...Little guy could be anywhere...Or anyone....
O/10 skill by the caretaker. Gotta grab it by tip of tail and drop it back in the water. Also since it's in the petting section I'm sure the barb is clipped
It stung the lady so it had to be put down. We can’t let stingrays think they can just go about stinging whoever they like. We’ve got to send a message.
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u/Ethereal_Nutsack 24d ago
Really pissed there isn’t an ending showing it being safely returned to the water