There are so many unusual, interesting, and new things you can find – if you just look around a little bit. And libraries are all about mysteries! So, we are looking at a real-life small mystery each week and bringing some library resources to help add some clarity and some thought.

This is a small mystery this week – but it is a mystery!

You have seen photos and videos of the manta rays swimming along. They are so beautiful to watch. Take a few calming moments now to admire their swimming:

But here is the mystery: Why is one of them pink???? Pink is not a usual color you will see in manta rays – but there definitely is at least one of them out there in the ocean.

Why? How? What happened here? We don’t really know. But go ahead and take a couple of minutes to learn more about this pink ray!

This is an excerpt from a National Geographic article; you can read the whole thing here. (And you can admire the photos of the pink manta!)

“Photographer Kristian Laine was freediving recently off the southernmost island of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef when a bright pink manta ray glided by. He thought for sure that his camera was malfunctioning.

“I had no idea there were pink mantas in the world, so I was confused and thought my strobes were broken or doing something weird,” says Laine, whose photographs posted on Instagram this week have gone viral. Laine later realized he’d spotted an 11-foot male reef manta ray named after Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling detective of the Pink Panther movies. The fish, who cruises the waters around Lady Elliot Island, is the only known pink manta ray in the world.

First spotted in 2015, Inspector Clouseau has been seen fewer than 10 times since. “I feel humbled and extremely lucky,” says Laine, who photographed him amid a group of seven other males, all of them vying for a female. (Read how manta rays form close friendships, shattering misconceptions.)© NGP, Content may not reflect National Geographic’s current map policy.

Scientists with the Australian research group Project Manta, who study the rosy ray, have confirmed its color to be real. At first, they theorized Inspector Clouseau’s color was the result of a skin infection or diet, similar to how pink flamingos get their color from eating tiny crustaceans. But in 2016, Project Manta researcher Amelia Armstrong took a small skin biopsy from the famous animal, and their resulting analyses ruled out diet and infection as the cause.

Now, Project Manta’s leading theory is that the manta has a genetic mutation in its expression of melanin, or pigment, says Asia Armstrong, a research assistant for the group.

And the ray is not just a cool-looking animal—it could contribute to science, she adds by email. “Understanding the origin of this genetic mutation may help inform us” about how color evolved in mantas, she says.”

Read the whole article here, and admire the pictures of the pink manta ray!

How can you bring this into your library? We have a few ideas:

• Let students watch other videos of manta rays swimming, jumping, and doing all the things they do.
• Put up a display of fish, ocean life, and everything else under the sea from your collection.
• Develop a list of other pink things – how many can you think of?
• Break out the paints, markers, colored pencils, construction paper, fabric, and anything else you have with some pink. Start making an assortment of pink animals who are not normally pink.
• Work with some paints or other substances for art class, and work on strategies for making pink by mixing other colors together.
• Have students write stories about the adventures a pink manta ray can have in the ocean.
• Let students do some research on the lives of a manta ray, and how they live their lives.