If the subject line didn't make much sense, allow me to explain: "anthropomorphism" is the attribution of human characteristics to animals and objects.

It's something we often see in fairy tales (like the Big Bad Wolf), fables (you might have heard of the Ant and the Grasshopper), or movies (who doesn't love Rocky Raccoon in the Guardians of the Galaxy?).

It's something people tend to naturally do with real-life animals. So often, children learn that dolphins love to laugh: while that's not the case - the sound they make is not laughing out loud (it's just the sound they make) and the way their mouth is shaped is not a smile - it's just how their mouths are shaped.

Same goes for stingrays. When you see (a picture or video of) a stingray from below, it's almost always "making a face". When the corners of their mouths go up, many humans interpret it as "smiling"... which we associate with happiness.

(see lots of pictures of sting rays making a face on this page!)

One case of a stingray "laughing" while being tickled went viral. Humans associated the stingray's behavior with having fun... while the animal was actually suffocating to death.

What does all of this have to do with mantas, you ask?

Not much, really, as manta rays don't typically make faces (their mouth is a large cavernous opening at the front of their body). However, as mantas often get confused with stingrays, we sometimes get asked if manta rays smile... so in my latest article, I ventured into the unknown and wrote about the feelings and emotions manta rays may or may not be experiencing.

Aloha, Martina ​

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