Animals
When it was open, the aquarium had 60 exhibits with a total tank volume of 32,000 US gallons (120,000 l; 27,000 imp gal), and was home to over 1,500 fish of 146 species. The aquarium largely featured freshwater species native to the Great Lakes region, but also had salt-water species from around the world. Currently the aquarium is operating with a limited collection of fish species, as volunteers are still working to restore the aquarium.
The aquarium made news in 2002 when one of its female white-spotted bamboo sharks gave birth to two young despite not having been near a male in six years in a suspected rare case of parthenogenesis.
Read more about this topic: Belle Isle Aquarium
Famous quotes containing the word animals:
“In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?”
—Jessamyn West (1907–1984)
“What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The alcoholic trance is not just a haze, as though the eyes were also unshaven. It is not a mere buzzing in the ears, a dizziness or disturbance of balance. One arrives in the garden again, at nursery time, when the gentle animals are fed and in all the world there are only toys.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)