The second half of my birthday in Boston involved a lot of aquatic life. After having lunch I headed to the waterfront, and the New England Aquarium. I had bought a combo ticket in advance for the aquarium itself and a trip on their whale watch boat.
The aquarium had a new exhibit (though the whole place was new to me, as I’d never been there before) – a touch tank. That is, you could stand by the side of a big, shallow tank, reach in and touch rays and small sharks. There were a couple kinds of each swimming around in the tank.
If you can’t tell from the photo, the background is painted on the wall.
Those are cownose rays, which I got to touch a couple of (you’re only supposed to touch them on the middle of their backs – otherwise you might freak them out). I also touched a bonnethead shark and an epaulette shark (for them it was more like petting a cat). All of these animals are about a foot or so long, I should add. It was pretty neat – the rays felt pretty slimy, whereas the sharks were rougher.
They have a lot of rocks to sit on, surrounded by water for swimming.
It was hard to get a good picture, unfortunately.
When I got to the top level, I was able to look out over the surface of the large ocean tank. They have a big, fake coral reef in the middle which goes up to the surface. I saw (but failed to take a picture of) a moray eel swim upward and (mostly) hide itself among the convolutions of the reef, then sit there with its mouth opening and closing, as morays are wont to do.
There was an aquarium employee at the top talking about the big tank and some of the animals in it. In particular, it was mentioned that their large green sea turtle (named Myrtle) is about 80 years old.
I had figured that the boat ride would be chilly compared with the city, especially as it was so late in the day. So I had worn jeans instead of shorts for the day, and brought a long-sleeved shirt in my backpack. I’d been hot at points earlier, but dressing warmly was well worth it once the boat got going (with its attendant wind).
The boat headed about 30 miles east from the harbor to get to whale feeding areas. We remained in Massachusetts Bay the whole time, and at our farthest point out we could see the tip of Cape Cod just to the east.
We saw 2 species: humpback and minke.
It was dark by the time we returned to the dock. From there I hopped on the blue line train and headed back up to Revere, then took the bus to near my hotel (and walked the last few blocks).
In February, we celebrated our anniversary by going to visit Magic Wings, a butterfly conservatory in the town of Deerfield, Mass. I had passed by the place before, but never been there. After living in this area for more than 6 years, it was about time to check it out.
Hint: the bugs look like yellow leaves amid the green leaves.
The big, red object that it’s perched on is a feeder, filled with nectar of some kind. There are a lot of these around, as well as actual flowers for the insects to feed on.
It slowly walked upward, and I had to just let it do its thing, as they have a strict rule against touching the animals (because of potential contamination). Once it got near my hip it decided to take off again. You might think that the butterflies would often land on people in this space, but it’s apparently a rare occurrence.
There were a bunch of them perched in a few trees, and some more (younger ones, maybe) in a couple of cages.
They were funny to behold. They mostly kept to the dirt areas under the bushes and trees, but would occasionally hop down into the walkway, run across, and hop up into the next dirt area.
Not pictured, we also were able to look in some windows at their nursery, where they’ve lined up bunches of cocoons, and you can occasionally see one break out as a newly-winged organism. Also, apparently when they’ve recently finished metamorphosis, their wings are a bit too wet for them to fly. We encountered one on the path that was having a hard time getting off the ground. An employee said it was probably newly released from the nursery and still needed to dry out a little. He picked it up by letting it walk onto a foam paintbrush (no touching, after all), and then he deposited it on a nearby branch so it would be out of harm’s way.
That was pretty much it. If you like butterflies, or insects in general, the place is well worth the $12 admission. I might like to visit again in the summer, when they’ll have their outdoor garden in bloom, attracting native species to it.
So it seems that DARPA is interested in making cyborgs. Animal cyborgs, at least – both flying and swimming ones – to gather intelligence in otherwise hard to reach places.
I have to confess, I find this almost as cool as I find it scary. Cybernetic organisms have only been in the realm of science fiction until now, after all.Â The insect kind are the ones that scare me more, as they could easily be used for, dare I say it, domestic use. Of course, the U.S. government wouldn’t spy on its own citizens, would it?
Thanks to smb for the links.
Went to Philadelphia this past weekend, and took in the Bodyworlds exhibit at the Franklin Institute. It was extremely fascinating. Seeing real human internal anatomy in person was well worth the admission price, especially since one’s only other option would be going to med school (the only other legal option, anyway).
In addition to seeing things I’ve never seen, I learned stuff I hadn’t known. For example, that the 2 ventricles of the heart pump blood to different areas.