| Cartilaginous Fishes | Rays |
Bowmouth Guitarfish
Rhina ancylostoma
| Conservation Status: Vulnerable
- © Shin-Enoshima Aquarium. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License v2.5
The bowhead guitarfish, like all guitarfish, is a cartilaginous ray, not a bony fish. Its appearance is that of a shark-ray mix. It is also known as the sharkfin guitarfish, mud skate, and shark ray. The bowhead part of its common name is derived from its distinctive mouth shape that has wavy edges giving the appearance of a longbow. .
Facts and Features
- Geographic Distribution
Africa’s east coast, Australia, Indonesia, India, and north to Korea and Japan
- Amazing Facts
Bowhead guitarfish are considered by some researchers to be the ‘missing link’ between sharks and rays based on the ray-like placement of their mouth and gill openings and the shark-like appearance of their streamlined body and powerful tail.
- At the Aquarium
Our bowhead guitarfish’s habitat is the Aquarium’s Shark Lagoon. It is fed shrimp and crabs offered to it on the end of a long pool. Our aquarists call this ‘target feeding’ as opposed to scatter feeding.