What does it feel like to stroke a ray, do you think?

Rays are curious animals which like to see what’s going on around them. The rays in the Ray Tank at Universeum like to come up to the surface to let people stroke them. 

Their skin is almost as rough as sandpaper, but a little slimy as well! They don’t have scales like normal fish, instead their skin is covered with a layer of tiny ’skin-teeth’, known as dermal denticles.

These denticles create small vortices in the water as it flows over the ray’s body, which reduce water resistance and increase the ray’s swimming efficiency.