Dallas World Aquarium

The Dallas World Aquarium is a for-profit aquarium and zoo located in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA. It aids conservation and education by housing many animals that are threatened or endangered as part of a cooperative breeding program with other zoos around the world. It has been an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 1997, and is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

History

The aquarium was opened in October 1992 in an old 1924 warehouse that had been gutted and rebuilt on the inside. In 1997, "The Orinoco - Secrets of the River" opened in an adjacent warehouse that had been similarly gutted and transformed, and the alley between the two buildings became the divide between freshwater and saltwater exhibits. In May 2000, it purchased a vacant lot behind the original warehouse for its first new construction, the Mundo Maya exhibit, which opened in August 2004.

Exhibits

The upper level of the aquarium is an artificial reproduction of the Orinoco Rainforest. The rainforest is an aviary, with birds such as scarlet ibis and toucans flying freely. While winding their way through the rainforest, visitors see the only public display of three-toed sloths in the United States, plus animals such as electric eels, caecilians, tamarins, poison dart frogs, Orinoco crocodiles, and vampire bats.

World Aquarium

The World Aquarium is an interactive animal exhibition and rehabilitation center located within the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Some highlights of the exhibition are a crawl-through shark tunnel and ray touch tank.

The aquarium houses a variety of animals such as sharks, rays, sea turtles, parrots, marsh turtles, otters, snakes, alligators, and sloths. Many of the animals on display are subject to guest interaction such as petting and feeding. The aquarium is also a proud holder of the Guinness Book of World Records recognition on of having the world's largest collection of two-headed creatures, of which the last one died in 2013.

According to the curator, the mission of World Aquarium is to increase the knowledge of aquatic life and environments, to enable people to conserve the world of water, and to provide leadership for the preservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources.

The aquarium depends heavily on its volunteers. Some volunteers have been working for five years or more.

Dallas

Dallas (/ˈdæləs/) is a major city in the state of Texas and is the largest urban center of the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the United States. The city proper ranks ninth in the U.S. and third in Texas after Houston and San Antonio. The city's prominence arose from its historical importance as a center for the oil and cotton industries, and its position along numerous railroad lines. The bulk of the city is in Dallas County, of which it is the county seat; however, sections of the city are located in Collin, Denton, Kaufman, and Rockwall counties. According to the 2010 United States Census, the city had a population of 1,197,816. The United States Census Bureau's estimate for the city's population increased to 1,281,047, as of 2014.

Aquarium

An aquarium (plural: aquariums or aquaria) is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aquatic reptiles such as turtles, and aquatic plants. The term, coined by English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, combines the Latin root aqua, meaning water, with the suffix -arium, meaning "a place for relating to". The aquarium principle was fully developed in 1850 by the chemist Robert Warington, who explained that plants added to water in a container would give off enough oxygen to support animals, so long as their numbers do not grow too large. The aquarium craze was launched in early Victorian England by Gosse, who created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea in 1854.

An aquarist owns fish or maintains an aquarium, typically constructed of glass or high-strength acrylic. Cuboid aquaria are also known as fish tanks or simply tanks, while bowl-shaped aquaria are also known as fish bowls. Size can range from a small glass bowl to immense public aquaria. Specialized equipment maintains appropriate water quality and other characteristics suitable for the aquarium's residents.

World

World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth or pertaining to anywhere on Earth.

In a philosophical context it may refer to:

In a theological context, world usually refers to the material or the profane sphere, as opposed to the celestial, spiritual, transcendent or sacred. The "end of the world" refers to scenarios of the final end of human history, often in religious contexts.

World history is commonly understood as spanning the major geopolitical developments of about five millennia, from the first civilizations to the present.

World population is the sum of all human populations at any time; similarly, world economy is the sum of the economies of all societies (all countries), especially in the context of globalization. Terms like world championship, gross world product, world flags etc. also imply the sum or combination of all current-day sovereign states.