Japanese butterfly ray
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The Japanese butterfly ray has crosswise stripes on its short tail.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Japanese butterfly ray
- Scientific name
- Gymnura japonica
- Japanese name
- ツバクロエイ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Myliobatiformes
- Family
- Gymnuridae
- Genus
- Gymnura
It lives in Japanese seas from Ibaraki and Niigata to Kyushu, and off Korea, China, Taiwan and in the Gulf of Thailand.
Its body is much wider from side to side than it is long from front to back, giving it the shape of a swallow.
How the Japanese butterfly ray lives
It lives on sandy and muddy bottoms in bay-like waters.
宇久井ビジターセンターBasic data
- Range
- Ogasawara Islands, Seto Inland Sea, southern Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, Chinese coast, Taiwan, Gulf of Thailand, and elsewhere
- Conservation status in Japan
- Data Deficient (DD)Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)
Where the Japanese butterfly ray has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- ツバクロエイ
- 简体中文
- 日本燕魟
- 繁體中文
- 日本燕魟
- 한국어
- 나비가오리
- Español
- Raya mariposa japonesa
- Português (Brasil)
- Raia-borboleta-japonesa
- Italiano
- Altavela giapponese
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Pari kupu-kupu jepang
- Tiếng Việt
- Cá đuối bướm Nhật Bản
- Русский
- Японский скат-бабочка
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — ツバクロエイChecked: 2026-11-04
- 宇久井ビジターセンター — ツバクロエイChecked: 2026-11-07
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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