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Kinematics Of Swimming Of The Manta Ray: Three-Dimensional Analysis Of Open Water Maneuverability, Frank E. Fish, Allison Kolpas, Andrew Crossett, Michael A. Dudas, Keith W. Moored, Hilary Bart-Smith

Biology Faculty Publications

For aquatic animals, turning maneuvers represent a locomotor activity that may not be confined to a single coordinate plane, making analysis difficult particularly in the field. To measure turning performance in a three-dimensional space for the manta ray (Mobula birostris), a large open-water swimmer, scaled stereo video recordings were collected. Movements of the cephalic lobes, eye and tail base were tracked to obtain three-dimensional coordinates. A mathematical analysis was performed on the coordinate data to calculate the turning rate and curvature (1/turning radius) as a function of time by numerically estimating the derivative of manta trajectories through three-dimensional space. Principal …