Southern Stingray Captive Behavior
Connor Philpot
Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, UT.
Abstract
The purpose of this project is to determine how captivity
changes the behavior of the southern stingray by monitoring the
behavior of the aquarium kept stingray versus the behavior of
southern stingray out in the wild. The objective is to see if there
are any major differences in behavior, not if it’s necessarily good
or bad. Due to the nature of how many animals that are kept in
captivity, I consider this study to be very important. There were
some pretty major differences when it came to the conclusions I
got from the data from my study. There are several behaviors
that were more common to the southern stingray kept in
captivity, enough to warrant a comparison and hypothesis as to
why the behavior is different. Some major areas of change can
be corelated to how often the captive stingrays are put on
display, and if the behavior change is intentional for these very
reasons.
Introduction
My question is, is does captivity that comes from aquariums and
zoos change the ways animals behave? Around people and in
general. I ask this question because I see animals in captivity
every week, and I have mixed feelings about it. I wonder if there
are dramatic changes in their behavior because of this captivity,
for better or for worse. My hypothesis is that animal behavior not
only changes in captivity, but it changes based on the nature of
the captivity. My example being the behavior of the southern
stingray changing to be more adapt to people, and social
interaction.
Methods
The way I approached this study, was to monitor the frequency
of behaviors between a captive and non-captive southern
stingray using an ethnogram. The behavior I looked out for were,
floating, swimming, laying on the floor, social interaction,
defensive posturing, companionship with other rays, and
camouflaging in the sand. I would observe each ray type over the
course of ten hours on ten separate hour-long observations.
Checking for what behavior they did every five minutes over the
course of said hour long observation. I then collected my data
and put it into graph form for comparison.
Discussion Graph Info and Data
This experiments main conclusion actually proves my
hypothesis to a degree. While there are no new
behaviors that sprung up, two of the behaviors were
more frequent with the stingray in captivity. The
stingray in the Aquarium seem to put on much more of a
show then wild stingray would. And this is no result of
training. The Aquarium stingrays seem to act more
performative and social on purpose, perhaps as a result
of their captivity. There constant interaction with
people might have conditioned them to be more social.
However, the shortcoming of this experiment, is we
can’t exactly know if this is why they’re behaving this
way. They could easily be swimming and acting more for
other reasons. However, I feel it is highly likely to be
like my hypothesis given their circumstances.
Future Directions
If I had to do this project again, I would probably do three things. I
would narrow down the behaviors into fewer but broader categories.
Then I would also split my time increments into two and a half
minutes instead of five, as it could cover more behaviors. Finally, I
would spend much longer doing this study. Twenty hours is still pretty
sizeable, but the data could be more accurate given more
observations. Those things could improve this experiment a great
Results deal.
The results I got for this project were very interesting.
The behaviors for the Aquarium sting ray were pretty
varied and on par with everything else. However, 2 very The Southern Stingray
important behaviors should be noted. While the Ocean
stingray did more average behaviors like sand
camouflaging and self-defense, the Aquarium stingray
swam much more and interacted more as well. Not even
by a little either, the difference is pretty sizeable. But
these were the core differences.
• Aquarium Stingray swam much more often
• Aquarium Stingray interreacted with other
stingrays and people much more often
• Ocean Stingray did a variety of behaviors more
frequently
• Ocean Stingray didn’t do one behavior for long
Acknowledgements
before doing something else besides floating I would like to thank SLCC, Professor Hardy, and Loveland Living Planet
Aquarium for the making of this project.
• Ocean Stingray floated much more