Selachians Extraord'mary 



111 



who have handled them, however. There is no known case of anyone 

 being grabbed by the cephaHc fins and dragged to his death. It is, how- 

 ever, possible that a harpooned Devil ray could upset a small boat, hurl 

 its occupant into the sea, and fall upon him. 



Mantas have been seen mating. Again we turn to Coles and his in- 

 valuable reports for an account. He once saw a pair of Lesser Devil rays 

 {Mobida hypostonia), the male's back just showing above the surface, 

 its wing-like pectoral fins curved upward; the white underside of the 



This drawing by Russell Coles shows how a harpooned Manta somersaulted from the 

 sea, and "violently ejected" an embryo. Then, as the embryo opened its pectorals and 

 fell toward the sea, the mother "disappeared beneath the surface." 



female just below the male. "Copulation," Coles reported, "was not 

 accomplished by a vertical motion, but by a graceful, serpentine lateral 

 curvature of the spine, as the male alternately advanced one of his 

 mixoptery gia (claspers) as he withdrew the other." The union was not 

 continuous. Occasionally the two separated, swam around in leisurely 

 curves or lustily leaped toward the sky, and then resumed their rhythmic 

 mating. 



.Manta young are said to be born, sometimes at least, during the 

 mother's great leaps from the sea. Coles witnessed such a birth, which 

 may have been brought on by the harpooning of the mother. (Some 

 authorities believe that Selachian mothers may sometimes abort their 

 young as a last, desperate act during or after capture. A more likely 

 explanation of these death-throe births is that the captive was about to 

 drop her pups anyway, and the shock of capture brought about a slightly 

 premature birth.) 



In the case Coles described, he said: 



