New Orleans Aquarium: Part 2

December 15, 2009 If you can still squeeze through a tire and don't mind looking a bit ... warped, you can be part of the exhibit and get an insider's look at life in a tank.

Okay, this is kind of neat, kind of gross:

Visitors can feed little fish and scraps to stingrays, which is a little gross to begin with. Grosser than that, the stingrays have really big, spongy mouths and they basically swallow and suck a whole fist to get the little morsel. Yick!

Yep, that entire slippery smile slurping your hand ... Bleck!

But better than a hand in an albino alligator...

... or a nurse shark. They suck too: they suck in dormant fish and other bottom feeders off the ocean floor. Nurse sharks are bottom dwellers found in tropical waters. Their days are spent huddled on the bottom in groups. At night they head out solo in hunt of prey. Here they presumably feel camouflaged amongst the oil rig pipes.

Above, the more active inhabitants circle and circle and circle.

-P