Thorny skate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Thorny skate | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||
| Amblyraja radiata (Donovan, 1808) |
The Thorny skate (Amblyraja radiata) is a species of fish in Rajidae family. It mainly lives near the bottom of the coastline of North Atlantic Ocean in depths ranging from 20 to 1000 metres and temperatures from 1 to 10 degrees Celsius. The length of its body and tail is generally slightly less than 1 meter and width is about half a meter. Its underside is smooth, but the upper side is, as the name suggest, very rough with many small thorns all over and 13-17 larger ones in line from the back of the head to end of the tail. The top side is brown with possibly black spots and the underside is white. It has a hard, roughly triangular snout and a tail, which is shorter than its body. It eats crustaceans, small fish and worms. It produces egg capsules, which are 3.4-8.9 cm long and 2.3-6.8 cm wide, which hatch outside the body. It was originally named Raja radiata.
[edit] References
- http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=2565#
- http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/ThornySkate/ThornySkate.html

