What do stingrays actually eat? New study reveals some only prefer a single type of prawn

As an ecologist who studies stingrays, people always ask me: what do these creatures eat? It may well be the reason I’ve spent the past three years tackling this very question.

We do know that, generally speaking, stingrays like eating benthic invertebrates – creepy-crawlies buried in the sediment along the sandy bottom. But there’s much we don’t understand about how the diet varies among different species depending on their size and where they live. In short, it’s more complex than you’d think.

My colleagues and I at James Cook University published a new study in

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