Aquarium/Reptile Complex – The reptile displays here are excellent, and include creatures from all over the world. There are some fantastic species on exhibit, and here is only a partial list of some of the highlights: false gharial (at least 3 of them), Grand Cayman blue iguana, frilled lizard, Gould’s montior (Aussie goanna), various poison dart frogs, gila monster, Boelen’s python, king cobra, red spitting cobra, dwarf caiman, green anaconda, reticulated python, matamata, hellbender, probably at least 5 different species of rattlesnakes (eastern diamondback, aruba island, timber, etc), copperhead, green mamba, eastern coppermouth, alligator snapping turtle, shingleback skink and puff adder. Elsewhere in the zoo there is a spacious yard for Galapagos tortoises and a large swamp for American alligators.
@DavidBrown The ARC has four specific galleries: Desert, South Carolina, Tropical and Ocean.
An excerpt from my 2010 summer review thread:
The aquarium side of the building is much smaller and relatively disappointing, which is in sharp contrast with the fairly impressive reptile/amphibian half. The 55,000 gallon Pacific Coral Reef tank and nearby Caribbean coral reef tank are both beautiful, but none of the much smaller tanks are that interesting. A massive Japanese spider crab has a tank that allows it to move about two feet in either direction, and there were dirty tanks that needed a good scrub. Also, two empty exhibits made a bad impression on the general maintenance of the area. Overall this building is a “Jekyll & Hyde” mixture of great and subpar. Maybe other than the two large aquarium tanks the entire area should be turned over to reptiles and amphibians?
