Video Shows Kid Playing With Giant Stingray: Is This Safe?

YouTube/screenshot

Viral footage of a boy playing with a large stingray has gone viral time and time again.

People are captivated by how close the child gets to the large cartilaginous fish.

(For starters, it’s probably not a very good idea as stingrays are known to attack people):

A child is seen in the video playing with a stingray in Vueltas, located in Valle Gran Rey, Spain.

This large stingray’s barbed stinger can easily be seen.

While they don’t aggressively attack humans, if it’s stepped on, the sea ray could use its stinger. Steve Irwin, the star of the “Crocodile Hunter TV” show, was infamously fatally stung in the heart by a stingray in 2006.

Rare Stingray Birth

A young YouTuber recently discovered a stingray giving birth in Australia.

The boy is seen approaching the ray from behind before showing the birth process.

According to National Geographic, “female stingrays give birth once a year. They usually have two to six young at a time.”

“While a baby stingray is still inside its mother, it grows to be quite large and developed so that when it’s born, it looks like a little adult. From birth, the young stingray is able to fend for itself,” says the website.

Stingray Lashes Out

In a recent incident in February 2019, a ray slashed a surfer in New Zealand.

A local surfer Colin McGonagle saw the injured man and assisted him.

“He was in shock and kept saying how painful the laceration was,” McGonagle said, Stuff.co.nz reported.

READ MORE

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“I understand that the barb has toxins that if not treated quickly, can progress into the blood system,” he said of the injury.

Give Them Space

University of Waikato researcher and PHD student Helen Cadwallader urged people to stay away from stingrays.

“Stingrays have a spine on their tail that can cause extreme pain and quite a lot of damage, but they won’t ‘attack’,” Cadwalleder told the website. “They don’t go out to chase you down and attack, what they do is entirely self-defense.”

A smooth stingray feeding on discarded snapper carcasses at Schnapper Point, Victoria, Australia. Alpha/Flickr/CC BY-SA-2.0 ept.ms/2utDIe90

“They may, for example, lash out if they get startled or feel threatened, for instance, if someone swims over their back and it doesn’t know they’re there, or if they’re stepped on,” she said.

“The safest thing to do,” she added,  “is give them as much space as you can.”

Another Incident

In January, a New Zealand teen was attacked by a stingray while bodyboarding on the beach, News.com.au reported. The website posted graphic images of the wound.

The young woman felt “waves of pain” after she was stung.

Officials told the news website that it wasn’t caused by a shark bite but likely a stingray.

Sea Monkeys dive guide Colleen Strayer with an Atlantic stingray at Alligator Reef. John Christopher Fine, Copyright 2016