Tennessee Aquarium

Tennessee Aquarium
Date opened	May 1, 1992 [1]
Location	Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Number of animals	12,000 [2]
Memberships	AZA
Website

The Tennessee Aquarium, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the second largest (next to the Georgia Aquarium) freshwater aquarium in the world^{[citation needed]}.

The Tennessee Aquarium's River Journey and Ocean Journey buildings are home to more than 12,000 animals including fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, birds penguins, butterflies and more. The original River Journey facility is organized around the theme of the Story of the River, following the path of a raindrop from high in the Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. Approximately 2/3 of the facility's display follows this theme, with the rest devoted to smaller aquatic exhibits hosting organisms from around the world. The self-guided tour takes visitors through three living forest exhibits that teem with life above and below the water’s surface. Along the way, visitors see thousands of animals like free-flying song birds, snapping turtles, sandbar and sand tiger sharks, stingrays, river otters, moray eels and colorful reef fish.

The new facility, opened in April 2005, ostensibly follows the theme of an Ocean Journey, though with much less consistency than the original. However this facility does include more hands on displays, such as a large shark tank and ray touch tank, large macaws, a butterfly garden with South American species on constant display, as well as the very large ocean tank itself. Other visitor favorites include the Boneless Beauties gallery, where guests enjoy invertebrates like jellyfish, cuttlefish, giant Pacific octopuses and Japanese spider crabs. An even newer 16,000 gallon penguin exhibit, with ten macaroni and ten gentoo penguins, opened May 3, 2007

[edit] Gallery

Potbelly seahorse pair link tails at the Tennessee Aquarium.

Sea nettle jellyfish at the Tennessee Aquarium.

Malabar Tree Nymph butterfly.

[edit] References

1. ^ Tennessee Aquarium Newsroom - News Release
2. ^ http://www.tnaqua.org/Animals/Meet_our_animals.asp retrieved October 22, 2006

[edit] External links

• Official site