It seemed like an innocent gesture.

He was just trying to make someone smile.

But in reality, the stingray wasn’t laughing, it was in distress.

A TikTok user posted on their account this video last June.

The man’s face didn’t appear.

But his gloved hand was visible. He was out on the sea on a boat and he had a stingray with him on the boat.

In the video, he said, ‘How do you tickle a fish?’ He then uses his glove hand to add pressure on what he thought was the stingray’s body and “tickle” it.

A hole opens up on the top of the body and the man believed the stingray was laughing.

In reality, the stingray couldn’t breathe.

This is what’s called anthropomorphization, where humans attribute human emotions to animal expressions.

What it is is a complete misunderstanding of how different humans are from other animal species.

They’re not the same as humans.

For example, this stingray has different body anatomy from humans.

The guy thought the holes on top of the body were its eyes but those are the stingray’s nostrils. And what they thought was the stingray’s mouth is a spiracle.

And the “body” is not the body but the stingray’s gills.

Because the stingray is out of the water, it is already struggling to breathe.

And because the man placed his hand on the gills, it brought distress to the stingray.

Aaron Shepherd, Robotics Research Assistant at Clemson University College of Engineering and Science and an avid diver, explained it really well.

“Think about it like this. This ray is supposed to be drinking water and now, it is up on air. And somebody is forcing it to open its mouth and let out all the water it needs and replace that with air. That would be the equivalent of somebody holding you underwater and tickling you and forcing you to gulp in a bunch of water, which will be really stressful and scary for you,” Aaron explained in his TikTok video.

The man who originally shot the video was also lucky the stingray didn’t retaliate.

Since it was under stress, the stingray could have whipped its tail and stung the main on the chest and abdomen.

That would have been fatal.

It happened to Australian animal expert, Steve Irwin.

“The stingray sting is extraordinarily painful. It’s not something you want to deal with,” Joseph Gemellaro of the Long Island Aquarium explained.

Aaron Shephard also added in his video that all diving instructors and experts tell their diving students never to touch animals in the sea.

And there are two reasons.

One, you can hurt them. And two, they can hurt you.

No matter how curious you are about them, if you have not done your research about the animal, you need to steer clear.

And besides, every animal, whether on land or sea, should be left to live their own life.

Animals shouldn’t be treated as objects.

“Like all wild animals, stingrays should be left alone to live out their lives in peace, free from human interference and harmful hobbies, such as sportfishing,” Ben Williamson, the programs director of World Animal Protection in the US, said.

Learn how the “tickling stingray” clip became a teachable moment for all in the video below!

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Source: YouTube – Inside Edition, Yahoo News, TikTok – @spacecadetshep, Blue Reef Aquarium