The Boy in the Submarine – episode 5: Manta Rays

Manta rays are so efficient and graceful that we built drones based on them; Manta ray probes that explore the sea…

Owen

Manta rays are huge, graceful filter feeders, which means they eat microscopic food by opening their mouth and sucking it in. They are so big that they provide home and shade for other kinds of fish. They are famous for jumping out of the water and gliding for short distances.

Here’s an amazing video I enjoyed watching one swimming, and taking a short leap out of the water from Diving Couple:

Manta rays are so amazingly graceful and energy efficient that several different groups including Festo, EvoLogics, and the UVA Center for Bio-Inspired Engineering Research have all based amazing robot designs on the Manta ray for exploring the ocean and cleaning up pollution.

Their brain is so sophisticated and their sense organs so complex that some people think that they may be the world’s smartest fish!