Touch and feed sting rays at Milwaukee County Zoo

ONE OF the world’s most fascinating underwater creatures is featured this summer at a special Milwaukee County Zoo exhibit that offers visitors the chance to observe and even touch a sting ray.

“Sting Ray Encounter” is the title of the exhibit that transforms the zoo’s Otto Borchert Family Special Exhibits Building into a tropical paradise, complete with palm trees, sand dunes, coral and saltwater aquarium reefs full of marine life.

The exhibit features water flowing through a shallow creek and cascading over a low waterfall into Sting Ray Lagoon, a 30-foot, 11,500-gallon touch pool. Visitors are invited to dip their hands into the lagoon and feel touch an assortment of barbless rays. Special food for the rays also is available so visitors can feet them.

The lagoon is large enough to permit the rays to flap their broad, wing-like fins, demonstrating how they “fly” or glide like flying carpets through the ocean.

Although sting rays are the featured attraction, the exhibit sponsored by Chase banks also includes tanks displaying eels, clown fish, the venomous Volitans lionfish and a variety of marine life found in the tropics and subtropics of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California.

For youngsters, some of the famous fish depicted in the movie “Finding Nemo” will be on exhibit.

In a tide-pool display, visitors can observe invertebrates such as small horseshoe crabs, cleaner shrimp and a species of sea stars (formerly called starfish) whose habitat is the rocky inter-tidal region between the high-tide mark and the low-tide marks.

Created by Science Applications Corporation of San Diego, California, “Sting Ray Encounter” is designed to bring a dramatic, interactive experience with exotic marine animals to Midwesterners who might never travel to a coral reef or even a tide pool, explains Brian Joseph, manager of zoological programs for the California firm. “We hope to provide visitors with a shared, memorable family experience and reveal simple lessons about these marine animals.”

The exhibit runs through Sept. 23 and is $1 for adults and children after regular zoo information. The Milwaukee County Zoo, one of the leading zoological parks in the country, is located at 10001 W. Bluemound Rd. For further information, contact the zoo’s public affairs and services department at 414-256-5411.

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