---
title: Mangrove Whipray (Urogymnus granulatus)
scientific_name: Urogymnus granulatus
common_name: Mangrove Whipray
taxon: Whiptail stingray
conservation_status: EN - Endangered
published: 2024-11-04T21:15:58.288Z
updated: 2026-08-17T17:06:37.819Z
tags: Mangrove Whipray, Urogymnus granulatus, Whiptail stingray, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/whiptail-stingray/mangrove-whipray
---

# Mangrove Whipray (*Urogymnus granulatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Whiptail stingray (*Dasyatidae*)
- **Size:** 1.4 m (3.5 m)
- **Depth:** 1-85 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Lagoons and reef with sand and rubble; juveniles in mangroves and estuaries
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous
- **Conservation status:** EN - Endangered

## How to recognise it

- dark gray-brown disc heavily flecked with white dots
- tail turning abruptly white beyond the sting
- thick oval disc, about as wide as long
- resting half buried on sand or lying on coral by day
- disc up to 1.4 m across

It hunts things it cannot see, smell or hear, and it does it by reading electricity.

The pores scattered over a ray's snout lead into jelly-filled canals ending in receptor cells: the ampullae of Lorenzini. Every muscle contraction in a living animal leaks a tiny electric field into seawater, and this system reads it. In this species the sensitivity has been measured at four nanovolts per centimeter, at a working range of about twenty-five centimeters. A shrimp buried under sand cannot hold still enough to hide, because its own heartbeat gives it away.

That is why a foraging ray works in slow overlapping passes with its disc flat to the bottom, and why it stops dead and excavates a spot that looks like every other spot.

The young live in mangroves, in brackish water among the roots, and move onto the reef as they grow, which ties the species to two habitats and makes it easy to hurt: the IUCN lists it as Vulnerable globally and Endangered in Southeast Asia, where the mangroves went first and the fishery took the rest.

The white tail beyond the sting is the field mark. Nothing else here has it.

## Also known as

- **English:** Mangrove Whipray, MacLeay's Coachwhip Ray, Macleays Coachwhip Ray
- **Hebrew:** טריגון מנגרובים
- **Italian:** Pastinaca delle mangrovie
- **German:** Mangroven-Peitschenschwanzrochen, Mangrovenstechrochen
- **Portuguese:** Raia-de-mangue
- **Polish:** ogończa namorzynowa
- **Czech:** trnucha zrnitá
- **Japanese:** Ojiro-ei, マングローブエイ
- **FI:** tähtisiimarausku
- **TH:** ปลากระเบนหางขาว

## Scientific synonyms

- *Dasyatis granulatus* (MacLeay, 1883)
- *Dasyatis ponapensis* (Günther, 1910)
- *Himantura granulata* (MacLeay, 1883)
- *Himantura ponapensis* (Günther, 1910)
- *Trygon granulata* MacLeay, 1883
- *Trygon ponapensis* Günther, 1910

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/whiptail-stingray/mangrove-whipray)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*