Okay, I have to start with this statement: This is my FAVORITE thing about the National Aquarium. This series of long habitats flowing on to the another like the river itself (5-6 tanks?). It's like snorkeling in the Amazon!--without the puppy-sized Tarantulas, Fire Ants, Poisonous Snakes and Frogs, Piranhas and Candiru. Look that last one up and shudder at the thought! The range and variety of fish, rays, turtles, just amazing. And it proves what my father taught me as we would traverse the woods of northern Michigan, "You will see as much as you are willing to look for." What's more, admittedly with my limited experience with aquariums, I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere else.
Feast and know, you will see as much as you are willing to look for!
Around the corner from the Amazon River Forest habitats and a really wonderful pair of habitats that are designed to look alike in their major features. One, however, is submerged in water while its sibling is mostly dry. The pair dramatizes the drastic difference in life in the Amazon Rain Forest between the Dry and Rainy Seasons. A cycle that has occurred from time immemorial and is now threatened by the acceleration of climate change that my species has initiated and refuses to address...it's humbling and so, so sad.
Submersed and full of little Neon Tetras flashing the red and blue scales.
Now dry with mosses and new vegetation sprouting.
Can you see the little frogs?
Let's take a closer look: an orange Splashback Poison Dart Frog, Adelphobates galactonotus.
Don't forget to look up! An Emerald Tree Boa, Corallus caninus, and a couple Giant Waxy Tree Frogs, Phyllomedusa bicolor.
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