Sting Ray - Other Uses

Other Uses

The skin of the ray (same in Japanese) is used as an under layer for the cord or leather wrap (known as ito in Japanese) on Japanese swords due to its hard, rough, skin texture that keeps the braided wrap from sliding on the handle during use. They are also used to make exotic shoes, boots, belts, wallets, jackets, and cellphone cases.

Several ethnological sections in museums, such as the British Museum, display arrowheads and spearheads made of stingray stingers, used in Micronesia and elsewhere. Henry de Monfreid stated in his books that before World War II, in the Horn of Africa, whips were made from the tail of big stingrays, and these devices inflicted cruel cuts, so in Aden the British forbade their use on women and slaves. In former Spanish colonies, a stingray is called raya látigo ("whip ray").

Monfreid also wrote in several places about men of his crew suffering stingray wounds while standing and wading into Red Sea shallows to load or unload smuggled wares: he wrote that to "save the man's life", searing the wound with a red-hot iron was necessary.

• Barbecued stingray is commonly served in Singapore and Malaysia

• Stingray City in Grand Cayman allows swimmers, snorkelers, and divers to swim with and feed the stingrays

• Stingray wallets

• Early Eocene fossil stingray Heliobatis radians

• Stingray in shallows