Whilst fishing in Charlotte Harbor off the coast of Florida, teenager Calvin Conger found himself playing midwife to a stingray.
WINK News reports that Conger accidentally reeled in a stingray during the trip, which he was going to then use as bait, until he realized that something was poking out of it.
“It like flopped right out,” as Conger put it. “It was weird.”
Like many elasmobranchs (sharks, rays, and skates), stingrays are viviparous, meaning that they give birth to live young that have developed inside the body of the mother. There are many different types of viviparity; stingrays employ ovoviviparity, or aplacental viviparity. This is where the embryos develop inside eggs within the mother that rely on egg yolk for nutrition, rather than a placenta.
Lucky for us, Conger caught the bizarre and quite rare moment on video which resulted in two baby stingrays being returned to the water, alongside the mother.
Check it out:
