Relation To Humans
While the bat ray, like other stingrays, has a venomous spine in its tail (near the base), it is not considered dangerous and uses the spine only when attacked or frightened.
Currently, the bat ray is fished commercially in Mexico but not the United States. However, it is sometimes fished for sport for its fighting characteristics. Prehistorically, native tribes on the California coast (probably Ohlone), especially in the San Francisco Bay area, fished bat rays in large numbers, presumably for food.
Commercial growers have long believed bat rays (which inhabit the same estuarine areas favored for the industry) prey on oysters, and trapped them in large numbers. In fact, crabs (which are prey of bat rays) are principally responsible for oyster loss. Bat rays are not considered endangered or threatened.
Bat Rays are popular in marine parks, and visitors are often allowed to touch or stroke the ray, usually on the wing.
Read more about this topic: Bat Ray
Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation and/or humans:
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To be a good enough parent one must be able to feel secure in one’s parenthood, and one’s relation to one’s child...The security of the parent about being a parent will eventually become the source of the child’s feeling secure about himself.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 14:7-10.