Shedd Aquarium offers top 10 tours

CHICAGO – Going to the John G. Shedd Aquarium is fun. It’s so much fun that the aquarium has “10 fun finds” – six in all, to be exact.

The fun finds are designed to focus a visitor on certain areas rather than trying to see everything at the aquarium. Their categories are Shedd Highlights All-Access, Abbott Oceanarium Discoveries, For Tots, Cool Moves: Animal Movement, Staying Alive: Animal Adaptations and Make Your Own Map.

Each tour has 10 stops. On the Shedd Highlights visitors will see the Australian lungfish, the oldest fish in a public aquarium; and in Oceanarium Discoveries, a hermit crab carries its home on its back.

Tots will have time to enjoy themselves at Polar Play Zone and to see a clownfish. Cool Moves offers a variety of movement with a tarpon, green moray eel and seahorses on hand. In Staying Alive, the mantella frogs may be small, but they have a big fist – they secrete toxins through their skin.

Make Your Own Map is a blank. It’s up to the visitors to select 10 stops they want to make, add them to the map and head out on their own personal exploration of the aquarium.

Of course, it’s also enjoyable just to wander along and visit the different exhibits. Waters of the World is the home of inhabitants of reefs, lakes, oceans and rivers. Over at the Caribbean Reef, visitors find themselves at a circular underwater reef.

In Amazon Rising, there are the piranhas, rays, anacondas and crocodiles one would expect along the Amazon River. The Abbot Oceanarium has the big boys – whales, dolphins, sea lions and sea otters.

Heading over to the Wild Reef exhibit gives a diver’s view of the reef and the underwater gardens. There’s a mangrove forest, a fishing village and a lagoon to look at.

Jellies is a special exhibit at the aquarium. Here visitors “go” into the world of sea jellies to learn how they have managed to survive through the centuries. Jellies, by the way, have no bones, brains or blood. More than 10 species are in this temporary exhibit, which will be gone after May 28.