Most of these tanks are not that big. Five or six feet (cubed)? A bit more?
There is so much going on! In this one corner of this one tank, we can see at least two kinds of coral, that reallllly skinny gold and black striped fish (pipe fish?) with an orange and white tail (I could not make this up!), that umbrella-shaped thing in the lower left corner, and something interesting in the lower right corner. To say nothing of all the purple stuff in the middle..........
A closer look at that thing in the lower right corner. Love the glowing tips of the ... tentacles?
More looking at that same tank. I believe there is painting on the glass. Blue. And pink splotches.
I believe this creamy stuff near the top is coral.
Look at the fish! Blue and orange! This has to be one of my favorites. This is a little one. About four inches long, as I recall it. Maybe five.
Fits neatly into "I couldn't make this up," don't you think? And look at the background! Purple ... stuff ... and green bubbles? I am assuming the green bubbles are plants, but I don't know..........
I am not sure if this next bunch is the same tank. I think not, but...........
Look at all that is going on here! At least three different anemones, at least two different corals, that flat cream-colored stuff -- sponges?, another pipefish (?), and I think the critter near the bottom, with all of those long white feelers, is a shrimp.
Closer crop of the above -- wondering what the leafy pink and purple stuff in the upper left is.....
Same tank. I wonder about that thing at the bottom left. Is it a really big coral animal? Or something else?
When I'm on vacation, visiting a museum/aquarium/planetarium, I tend to cruise. I don't spend much time in one spot. If I lived in Chicago, I would totally buy a pass to the Aquarium, so I could go there when the hordes were elsewhere, park myself in front of one tank, and look and look and look...................... And read all of the descriptive info. And look some more. And take tons of pics...................
Same tank as above. There are at least two shrimp in here.
I wonder if it's an effect of the light, or if all of this stuff is really color coordinated!
This shot is blurry, but it's the best one I got for showing how long that shrimp's feelers are. I wonder what those "feelers" are really called... I don't think I've ever seen one critter described as having more than two antennae, but this little guy has a lot of ... very long skinny projections.
Closeup, showing the fierce (though small -- maybe half an inch, wide open) claw at the end of its stripy leg.
Same tank. Now we are in serious "I couldn't make this up" territory!
The blue and orangy-gold polkadots. The little patch with teeny white polkadots on black! The transparent fins. The pointy front end (not sure how much of that is mouth?). The squid-tentacles-looking tail. No. I could not make this up.
You know how I say that no matter how you portray clouds, you are almost certainly correct; that sometime, somewhere, clouds have looked EVERY way?
Well, I'm thinking I need to say the same thing about under-sea creatures. Any fish/shrimp/coral/whatever you can imagine, probably exists, somewhere, along with tons of creatures I suspect that all of 7 billion of us, together, can't begin to imagine.....
Same background as Polka Dots, above, with a different fish.
Confrontation!!!
Closer view. Shrimp in assertive (if not aggressive?) stance, facing off a blorpular fish.
Shrimp advances!
Fish retreats. See the fish, blurrily on the move, lower right?
Before we leave this fish, it is definitely in "I couldn't make this up" -- look at the colors that make up its spots!
I *think* the next bunch are all in the same tank, and I *think* it's not the same tank as the above. It's a problem, doing the post-processing almost three weeks after I took the pics -- I can't remember that sort of detail any more.............
I think this is a sea urchin, though I don't think I'd ever seen one with such fine striped spines. I wonder what it was stuck to. This is the mouth end, not the foot end, I'm pretty sure. Look at the color! I could not make this up..............
By the way -- all the color I've shown you, here at the Aquarium, is as the camera and I recall it. I haven't souped it up At All. !!!
This is a group of some sort of animal. I love how it moved as the water (or the fish!) moved it......
I think this is the fish that moved those ... anemones? ... in the video. All those stripes; all those tiny dots.....
Upper right corner of the above -- here on "the big screen" I am seeing, for the first time, little coral animals at the Aquarium. Cool.........
A wider look at that the same tank we've been looking at. So much going on..............
The group of the wavy animals in the video. A group of bright gold anemones.
More of the tiny purple coral animals, and I do not know what that textured white thing is.....
At first I thought this was the same fish I tried so hard to get a pic of, earlier, but though it has many of the same colors, I think it is an entirely different kind of fish. I wonder if the purple is the same sort of coral we've been looking at, but from a distance it looks entirely purple?
I am thinking about all of these animals that do not move. Corals. Anemones? Barnacles. When I took What a Plant Knows, he talked to us about how the fact that plants cannot move means they have to be very clever indeed about dealing with their environment. They can't leave to escape predators, nor to find a more congenial climate if their environs start to get more salty, say (or hotter!). Plants have to manage, where they are, or perish.
Looking at all of these animals who are similarly sessile (Google: "fixed in one place; immobile"), I am wondering about the tools they have for dealing with predators, and dealing with changes in their environment. I am betting that these animals are vastly more vulnerable to the ill effects of climate change than creatures who can move to get to conditions that suit them. No wonder people with brains are so concerned about our world's coral reefs, as the seas get warmer and warmer..............
Taking this "sessile animal" thought in a different direction -- I hadn't thought about it before this minute -- I am not aware of any sessile animals on land. In the water, they count on the water to convey food to them. On the land ... I suspect that only those who can make their own food (plants), or live off food made by others (fungi), can survive without moving. I wonder if this is true...........
This is definitely not the same tank. We are looking down into this exhibit. I am not making up these colors. They are just as the camera and I recall them. Orange sea star, white anemone, orange and hot pink anemones(?). I wonder what that thing is on the white anemone. I didn't notice it when I took the pic.
A close crop of a clearer look at the starfish. I just saw on tv recently that they have primitive "eyes" at the ends of their legs. When I saw that, I immediately thought "No WONDER they hold the tips of their legs up as they walk around!" We can see that this one has those tips up. "The better to see you, my dear....."
I had just been wondering about not seeing shellfish, and then I saw these things at the top of this image. Mussels? Maybe.
More shrimp. Or are they shrimp if they don't have claws? Are they shrimp if the DO have claws? Wondering now, if those things I was calling "shrimp," above, really were shrimp?
Also, dark maroon sea urchin, above the tail of the shrimp at right.
This part of the exhibit has mussels and barnacles above the waterline. I'm pretty sure this waterline (in this exhibit) does not go up and down, and therefore surmise that the mussels and barnacles are dead.........
I find it sort of hard to believe that yellow/orange sea anemone (which was BIG -- maybe a foot tall?) is real. But the tentacle-y bits look real.....
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