What is the difference between sharks and rays

Many rays have strong jaws that help them crush mollusks and crustaceans. Like sharks, rays don't have a swim bladder, but unlike sharks, they move their pectoral fins when they swim. They also must stay in motion constantly or they will sink!

Electric rays make their own electricity! They have organs on either side of their heads that can deliver a shock of up to volts! They use this electric shock to scare away predators and to shock prey. Stingrays, eagle rays and devil rays have spiny stingers on their tails that can inject a predator with venom. Furthermore, the gill openings of rays are located on the underside of the body, whereas the gills of sharks are located on both sides of the body.

Rays are generally more specialized in their food sources compared to sharks, making their distribution limited to smaller areas, and the distribution of many, more mobile, shark species greater 2,3. For example, the similar-looking sawfishes and sawsharks are ray and shark species respectively, but both get their name from their saw-like rostrum. The major difference to distinguish the two is that sawfishes rays have the gill openings on the underside of the body, whereas the sawsharks have the gill slits on both sides of the body like all other sharks.

In addition, sawsharks have a pair of long barbels on the underside of the rostrum. Sawsharks and sawfish do both use the rostrum for the same purpose: to stun prey 2,4. Development is direct and female is ovo viviparous. Ray: It is a marine and benthonic cartilage fish.

It swims by flapping action of pectoral fins, carnivorus in feeding and shows branchial respiration. It defends itself by producing electric current from the electric organs.

Male has claspers, so the fertilization is internal. Female is oviparous. Laterally compressed. Dorsoventrally flat. More Reading : Why do the great white sharks congregate around Neptune Island? The science bit about the similarities between sharks and rays. They are both are Chondrichthyes. But then they both also belong to a subclass of fish elasmobranchs. It is this subclass of fish that is referred to as elasmobranchii which means sharks and rays have skeletons consisting of cartilage instead of bones.

It is understood by scientists that sharks evolved around million years ago. As a matter of interest it is the lobsters of the oceans that pre-date sharks in the evolution trail. Lobsters are thought to have prowled the oceans some million years ago. But the sub-species of sharks, i.