![]() ![]() But bits of plankton, instead of getting sucked into these vortices, ricochet off the lobes back toward the manta’s esophagus, to be swallowed. When water comes into the manta’s mouth, it flows between the lobes forming swirling vortices before eventually swooshing out to exit the ray’s mouth. Like whales, they breach for unknown reasons. Mantas may visit cleaning stations for the removal of parasites. The filter is made of a series of long, cartilaginous lobes arranged in parallel, with tiny gaps in between. They are filter feeders and eat large quantities of zooplankton, which they gather with their open mouths as they swim. Gestation lasts over a year and mantas give birth to live pups. The manta ray’s mouth filter defies convenient kitchen analogies, the team found. BIG GULP A filter in the mouth of a giant oceanic manta ray ( Manta birostris) forces plankton to change direction, enabling the filter to capture tiny organisms that could just pass through its pores. The pups are born with their wings folded around their body to allow easier passage through the birth canal. ![]() Computer programs also helped calculate the trajectories of particles of different sizes. Females give birth to one or two live young. Of course, half of births occur during the first 24 or 25 years. Manta rays deliver once about every 2-5 years and can have offspring for about 30 years. The team placed the model filter in a tank filled with dye to track how water and planktonlike particles move through it. Fertility is very low in comparison with other fish because females usually have 1 or 2 offspring maximum at a time. Only large warm water sharks, such as the tiger shark are known to. Paig-Tran and her colleagues took CT scans of several manta ray species specimens from museums, then 3-D printed a replica of the filter found in one species, the giant oceanic manta ray ( Manta birostris). Likewise, it is not known how long they live, but best guesses are about 25 years. ![]()
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