Jellyfish are some of my favorite animals! These are pacific sea nettles. They do very well in a large aquarium and have very long tentacles. They have a couple different kinds of tentacles, ones for stinging anything that brushes against them, and ones for pulling prey into the "mouth" of the jellyfish. Jellyfish have no brains and can be up to 98% water.
This picture has a manta ray and a giant guitarfish. The manta ray was having a lot of fun swooping around the tank. I found out later that the swooping is how they catch plankton and fish larvae. The giant guitarfish generally hangs around the ocean floor and eats crabs, squid and small fish. It is considered a threatened species due to human harvesting the flesh and fins for food.
This is me with an albino alligator! There are currently around fifty known albino alligators in the world and the aquarium has two. The alligators were both under about six feet long and had a tank that limited the amount of UV exposure. There were a lot of people around the tank looking at the alligators, wondering if they were real. They didn't move around a lot and spend a lot of the day resting. I just couldn't resist getting my picture taken with one!
The aquarium has several touch tanks where you can see and feel all types of animals. This is a cownose ray that was in a tank with a lot of other creatures including sharks! There were a lot of touch tanks at the aquarium that had shrimp, starfish, hermit crabs, sea urchins, and other things. The skin on the rays and sharks were soft, slick and rubbery.
This is my favorite picture of me, it looks like the octopus is putting its arm around me! The octopus was crawling all around the tank and my friend was able to snap this picture before it moved on to other parts.
I had a great time and can't wait to share more of my adventures!
