A Day at the Mystic Aquarium

I returned today to Mystic, Connecticut - this time to go to their aquarium. It was fabulous! While it is not perhaps as big as the Boston or Baltimore aquarium it is highly interactive and has many outdoor exhibits. And since today was the first day when it was warm enough to walk around outside and inside in shorts and short sleeves, it was the perfect way to celebrate. So, lots of pictures. But first, here are the top three most interesting facts I learned today:

(1) Puranas have taste buds all over their body so they can sense in advance what will be good to eat (and they are much smaller than I thought they were)

(2) Jelly fish have little mouths going up and down their arms.

(3) When a female clownfish dies, a male clownfish becomes female so it can mate with males.

The one thing I did not get a picture of is me touching a sting ray. They had lots of areas where you could touch things. One was a sting ray pool (clearly they somehow didn't have their stings). They are funny though because they sort of try to get you to pet them like a dog. They come up to the edge of the water. They feel insanely slimy. And fun fact about them: They have no bones but are made purely of cartilage.

Here are some of the cool things I saw: The first set of pictures was in an exhibit known as "Outback Bird." Do not ask me why there was a bird exhibit in an aquarium, because I never figured it out. But, it was by far one of the highlights. They give you a stick with food, you walked in and these colorful crazy birds just flew down on you and ate. The first time it happened it scared me to death. I think this is partially from having seen the movie The Birds and partially from having been attacked by my uncle's crazy parrot, Charlie (who has since had to switch homes, but whose favorite saying was, "Show me you wings" (wings super high pitched).

Trevor is my friend who went with me. The birds loved him - sometimes he'd get like 4-5 at once!

The following are pictures of Stellar Sea Lions - which are the biggest sea lions in existence. This is one of only five aquariums to house them:

Even sea lions prune themselves I suppose!

The male sea lions are very territorial as demonstrated in this brief video:

Here is a picture of their biggest sea lion who weighs just under 1900 pounds. He is kept in his own little space so he doesn't hurt anyone else. The girl there told me that the male sea lions seem to be okay with living in isolation more so than the female - sound familiar?????

And here is a little video of the only seal in the pond with five sea lions. It is blind. What is cool about sea lions is that they can actually lift themselves up on their four legs/fins and navigate around. Seals have little stubby fin things and there for they literally hop of their stomach. I was sadly not able to capture the actual movement on camera, but he is still cute!