266 Shark and Compa?iy 



A Sting ray ( Dasyatis centroura ) . 



Courtesy, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology 



rivers of Paraguay, in the Amazon River, and in other rivers south to 

 Rio de Janeiro. But undoubtedly its riparian haunts extend throughout 

 the innumerable and little-explored rivers that lace the whole of the 

 equatorial rain forest of South America. 



Family Dasyatidae—STiNG Rays, Whip Rays 



". . . There is nothing that is more to be dreaded than the sting 

 which protrudes from the tail of the Trygon ... a weapon five inches 

 in length. Fixing this in the root of a tree, the fish is able to kill it: it 

 can pierce armor, too, like an arrow, and to the strength of iron it 

 adds the venom of poison."— Pliny's Naturalis Historia. 



If Pliny was right, they aren't making Sting rays the way they used to. 

 No modern Sting ray's stinger will wither a tree or pierce armor. But 

 there is no doubt that the stinger can inflict painful and, occasionally, 

 fatal wounds. According to some versions of the Odysseus epic, the 

 long spear with which Telegonus killed Odysseus was tipped with a 

 stinger provided by the sorceress Circe. 



In his Generall Historie of Virginia, Captain John Smith, writing of 

 himself in the third person, tells how he captured a Sting ray with 

 "a most poisoned sting . . . which she stucke into the wrist of his 

 arme near an inch and a half; no blood nor wound was seene, but a 

 little blewe spot, but the torment was instantly so extreeme, that in 



