'Looks like a baby rat': Fisherman baffled by mysterious creature
A man was baffled by a bizarre creature he reeled out of a river, prompting people to speculate what exactly it is.
The video of the creature, thrashing around on a wharf, was shared on Facebook and it is clearly attached to a fishing line.
“Somebody tell me what the f*** this is coming out the river,” the man who caught the creature wrote on Facebook.
The video, shared by the man from the US state of Arkansas, has been viewed over 900,000 times since it was uploaded.
People in the comments guessed the creature was some type of fish or squid while others suggested it was some sort of stingray or skate.
One outlandish prediction was that it was spawned from a squirrel and a fish, saying “contaminated rivers are deforming area fish”.
“Looks like a baby rat,” one commented.
However, PhD Candidate in The Fish Lab in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University, Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons, was able to provide some clarity.
Ms Pini-Fitzsimmons said the creature was “definitely a skate”, which is part of the same family as stingrays, which explains the resemblance between the two.
In the video, it appears the skate is reacting to being caught, curling up its wings underneath its body, Ms Pini-Fitzsimmons said, also adding the skate in the video was definitely a male.
Skates are smaller than stingrays, with prominent dorsal fins, according to Sciencing, and they lay eggs, opposed to rays, which birth live young.
There are more than 150 species of skates, which do not like brackish and freshwater environments.
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