See individual pages for the baby big skate, baby turtles, Napoleon wrasse, Atlantic Trumpetfish and Pacific octopus. Scroll down for other critters.
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The strangest of them all... the Aquarium Collections staff |
One of the last blue-faced iguanas on Earth. The Shedd, with its two females and one male, is part of a breeding organization. They have yet to obtain any fertile eggs, although they hope to have some success once they move the animals to a more natural exhibit setting.
In the bowels of the aquarium resides a small sea jelly culture table. As of the present, they only raise moon jellies. Soon they hope to obtain sea nettles and start propogating their upside-down jellies.
Personally dubbed "That Evil Shrimp," this mantis shrimp would try to attack me every day as I cleaned the windows. The species has a modified right 'leg' that develops into a "club" of sorts. This club-leg is one of the fastest known moving body part in the animal kingdom. Mantis shrips are known to break aquarium glass and split caretaker's thumbs.
The chambered nautiloids were just darned cool critters. They are the least-evolved of all cephlapods. The ones at the Shedd were impressively healthy, sporting some of the longest survival rates of the aquarium industry. This particular batch arrived over five years ago - each individual only about the size of a golf ball.
The Shedd is partnered up with a group called Project Seahorse which is inolved with - among other things - a great deal of political lobbying against the seahorse trade. The Shedd, for its part, provides financial support to Project Seahorse, fosters public awareness of the plieght of seahorses through an educational seahorse exhibit, and promotes the trade of captive-born seahorses among public aquariums. The Shedd's own breeding program includes several actively breeding pairs of seahorses. They deal with almost weekly births of various species; with up to 800 babies per birth event, the seahorses staff have their hands full!
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