Emerald Tree Boa

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we couldn’t think of a better animal to highlight than the emerald tree boa.

Wait, you say, the patron saint of Ireland was no friend of snakes, legendarily driving them out of the Emerald Isle.

We’ll get to that.

First, let’s look at our 3-foot male emerald tree boa in Amazon Rising. While he’d be perfectly camouflaged on Ireland’s rolling greensward, he’s adapted to the equally verdant canopy of the Amazon rainforest. Neatly coiled in concentric loops on a branch, with head in the middle, and absolutely motionless, he disappears into the green like just another vine. The white zigzag pattern along his back imitates the mottled sunlight that penetrates the forest’s dense leaves.

The Invisible Hellbender

Gather ’round and listen to my tale of Shedd Aquarium’s most mysterious animal, the invisible hellbender.

What’s a hellbender, you say? Why, it’s a phantom amphibian, a salamander up to 2 feet long, wrinkled, slimy and beady-eyed, given to making its home under rocks in clear, fast-flowing streams. And while it has lungs, it never has to come up for air. Legend has it hellbenders cavort with trolls and troglodytes on moonless nights.

Animal Encounters of the Spooky Kind

It’s the season for ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. So just in time for Halloween and our Oct. 28 Spooky Seas family overnight, meet this trio of long-leggedy, short-leggedy and no-leggedy beasties. They’re among the stars of our daily live-animal encounters. 

Concert to Keep the Lakes Great

The Concert to Keep the Lakes Great starring Guster was a great success! Our audience enjoyed a live performance by Guster on the beautiful lakefront setting of The Dock at Montrose Beach. Thank you to all the wonderful fans that attended the show. A special thank you to sponsors of Shedd's Great Lakes conservation efforts: Coca-Cola and ArcelorMittal, as well as our event partner, 93XRT.














Guster performs at the Concert to Keep the Lakes Great.














Fans enjoy live music at The Dock on Montrose Beach.














The Great Lakes Booth at the event, featuring turtles native
to the Great Lakes.

All photos by Steve Hardy, CBS Digital Chicago.

Name Your Poison: Sea Snakes

Sea snakes did not make the cut for Wild Reef. The strikingly striped blue-lipped sea kraits—all bold bands of turquoise and black—would have required a fairly large habitat all to themselves among the realistically teeming multispecies displays.

And, of course, these elapids—hissing cousins of cobras, taipans and terrestrial kraits—are among the most venomous snakes in the world.

Sea Change

To celebrate World Oceans Day on June 8, we'll be posting every day this week about current issues facing oceans.

We rely on the oceans to regulate the world’s temperatures, provide us with food and produce most of the oxygen we breathe every day. Just as the seas support us, we protect them by responsibly managing marine resources, from our global fisheries to our coastal tourist hotspots. Now the oceans are facing a threat that we must work together to address: climate change.

Amazon Turns 10

Once upon a time, you couldn’t see tarantulas or snakes or monkeys at Shedd Aquarium. Then, in 2000, Amazon Rising opened a new era of exhibits at Shedd. In the curving gallery’s big floor-to-ceiling habitats you can see animals that live in the river, on the floodplain forest floor and even up in the canopy—together—in a portrayal of the most diverse and complex freshwater ecosystem in the world.

In another departure from traditional exhibits, Amazon Rising not only transports you to the steamy floodplain forest, but it also walks you through a complete year on the same stretch of river. Moving through the seasons—and corresponding levels of the Amazon—you can see exposed riverbanks at low-water season and a stilt-leg house up to its porch in piranhas during the annual floods.

The turtle and the remora: a love story

For one male remora at Shedd, it's been tough to get a girl to let him "stick around" for Valentine's Day. Instinctively he has always wanted a large predatory fish or other marine animal to cling to for help finding food, transportation and protection. But he can recall countless rejections and brush-offs from the large fishes, who find him annoying and bothersome. This year, that feeling of solitude is all in the past. On Valentine's Day, our lovable remora will be happily gliding under the protection of a very special Shedd Aquarium lady.

Transporting turtles

Update from Releasing a sea turtle, Turtle surgery, Saving sea turtles

I said goodbye to everyone at Gumbo Limbo and headed north about an hour to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. Dr. Mette was doing a flipper amputation on a loggerhead and I was able to see the removal of a badly damaged flipper. This poor turtle was hit by a boat propeller and got osteomyelitis--fancy word to say bone infection. These infections are very hard to clear up, especially if they are so wide spread as this poor turtles was.

Releasing a sea turtle

Update from Saving sea turtles and Turtle surgery.

After the big round of surgeries yesterday we got in to find that one turtle recovered so quickly that he decided to get out of his pool and walk around the class room all night!  Very silly turtle.

Heather, a Gumbo Limbo Turtle Research staff member, and I medicated all turtles and then started to decide where everyone should go.