Skate Face
This blue skate’s skeleton is made up of the same stuff as your nose and ears – cartilage. However, parts of a skate’s skeleton, such as the skull and spine, are strengthened by minerals, resulting in structures that resemble bone.
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DownloadSkate Face
This blue skate’s skeleton is made up of the same stuff as your nose and ears – cartilage. However, parts of a skate’s skeleton, such as the skull and spine, are strengthened by minerals, resulting in structures that resemble bone.
What am I looking at?
This image shows the skeleton of a skate. Most of the skeleton is made of cartilage, which is labeled in blue (1). However, parts of the skeleton are calcified, like bone, including the skull (2), spine (3), and sensory pores (4), all labeled in red.
Biology in the background
Skates’ cartilage skeletons are strong, durable, and, most importantly, light in weight, allowing them to maneuver through the water with surprising speed and grace. In addition, skates have special calcified facial pores that can detect weak electric fields and allow them to find prey, locate other skates, and possibly even navigate ocean currents.
This newborn skate of the genus Raja is about 2.5 centimeters long, or a little bit bigger than a human thumbnail.
Technique
This image was made with macrophotography, using alizarin red to stain the bone and alcian blue to stain the cartilage.
Lynn Kee, Stetson University