differences between rays and skates

I have asked all over, including marine bio people and people at the Monterey bay aquarium but nobody can answer this question:

what is the difference between a ray and a skate?

do you know? please share

A ray is a flat shark, a skate is a little flat shark.

But not quite right.
There are plenty of rays whose size range is well below that of the clear nose skate, for example.
Here's a blurb from Bob Shipp:
"The rays generally have whip-like tails, often with a dangerous, venomous spine, while the skates (and electric rays) have fleshy tails which bear relatively well developed fins."
Electric "rays" are actually closer kin to skates than to other rays.
"The sawfishes and guitarfishes are also considered skates, although so specialized that they are placed in separate families by biologists."
For some sample sizes, Yellow Stingray is generally under a foot while the Manta can get up to 22' and weigh over 2000 pounds; the Clearnose Skate runs about 2.5 feet and the Sawfish gets up to 18 ft and over 800 pounds.
Bottom line... it's never quite as simple as it seems.
Rick

Difference between Rays and Skates

Links for Each

But you know I always thought a ray was a beam of light and a skate was a shoe with wheels.

DiverBuoy once bubbled...
But you know I always thought a ray was a beam of light and a skate was a shoe with wheels.

Click to expand...

No.......

A skate is a shoe with a Knife blade on it..:cold: