Two friends and I (all guys), hanging out one Saturday afternoon, realize that [Other Friend] has a glaring gap in his knowledge, and despite our best attempts to educate him on this gap, he is convinced we’re all tricking him as some kind of prank (which is fair, as we do that to each other a lot). 

So, we decide to drive somewhere to prove that we are right and he is wrong. As we’re driving, we realize we’re passing close to the home of another friend in the group, so I call him from the car (I’m in the passenger seat).

Me: “Hey, [Friend], I’m here with [Other Friend] and [Driver Friend], going to the aquarium. Wanna come?”

Friend: “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wholesome as f***, but why did a bunch of grown-a** men decide to all go to the aquarium of all places?”

Me: “[Other Friend] doesn’t think seahorses are real.”

Friend: “…What?”

Me: “[Other Friend] doesn’t think seahorses are real. He thinks we’re all pranking him.”

[Other Friend] starts talking loudly from the back seat, so that [Friend] can hear:

Other Friend: “Sure, sea horses, magical sea creatures that look like horses with mermaid tails and just float upright and look majestic as f***. You’re telling me those are real?”

All Of Us: “Yes!”

Other Friend: “Whatever, at least I’m getting a free day out of it.”

Me: “We never said they were magical.”

Other Friend: “You said the males get pregnant.”

Driver Friend: “Technically the fertilized egg gets transplanted into a space on the male where—”

Other Friend: “—Yup. Pregnant. Pregnant male. Magic. Y’all might as well say they’re dragons.”

Me: “Aaaanywho, [Friend], we’re passing your off-ramp in about five minutes; we picking you up?”

Friend: “Just to see [Other Friend]’s face when he sees the seahorses for real? You bet your a** I’m in!”

So, we take a small detour, pick up [Friend], and proceed to the aquarium. When we tell the young woman why we’re there, she thinks it’s hilarious and adorable, and allows us to get in on a family ticket (instead of paying for four full-priced adults), and she tells [Other Friend] to prepare to have his mind blown.

That was the first indicator to him that maybe, just maaaaaybe, we weren’t pranking him after all. 

When he finally saw the seahorses for real, the noises coming out of him were enough to get the aquarium employee working that room to ask him to calm down. Then when that guy found out why [Other Friend] was making such noises, he also thought this was adorable and spent the next twenty minutes answering all of [Other Friend]’s questions about seahorses, male pregnancy, and everything.

In fact, the seahorse lesson was so engrossing that by the time we were done, about five kids and their respective parents had joined us to make an impromptu crowd of eager learners about ‘hippocampus hippocampus‘ (the seahorse scientific name I learned that day!).

I work at the customer service desk at a world-renowned aquarium. A family of visitors is walking by, and the mother walks over to ask a question:

Visitor: “How do they get the whales to come back in each morning?”

Me: “Come back? From where, ma’am?”

Visitor: “From the lake! When you release the whales back into Lake Michigan, how do you get them to swim back into your aquarium for the morning presentation?”

Me: “We… don’t, ma’am. The whales live in a three-million-gallon tank.”

Visitor: “Well, that’s a waste of effort. You’re right next to the lake!”

Visitor’s Daughter: “Mom, we were just at the zoo. You think they let the lions walk around Old Town and chill while not on the clock?”

She answered it better than I could have!

I worked at an aquarium in Maui, Hawaii, during the years when the TV show ‘Lost’ was a very big hit.

Guest: “Where’s the polar bear kept?”

Me: “Ma’am, this is an aquarium.”

Guest: “And Polar bears swim, don’t they? I just want to see the one that they use in the show. I know they film it here.

Me: “Ma’am, you have been watching too much TV.”

There’s a small aquarium I docent at when I’m down in the area. I was nervous about being in a public-facing job, especially after reading too many horror stories on NAR, but the people visiting are pretty all right, for the most part. But there was one memorable incident.

Part The First: A Shocking Lack of Maternal Instinct

I was on the other side of the tanks when this was happening, but my coworker told me about it after.

The windows in one of the tanks were being cleaned. The area where the machines were plugged in on the outside was roped off with yellow warning tape.

A small boy ducked under the tape. My coworker grabbed him and took him back to his mother.

Coworker: “Your son was in a dangerous area trying to play with the wires.”

A few minutes later, the boy was back again.

Coworker: “You have to keep your child away from there.”

Mother: *To child.* “[Son], don’t go there.”

Astonishingly, that half-hearted verbal warning was not enough to keep the kid from coming back for a third try.

Coworker: “You have to actually watch your children and physically keep them from going places they shouldn’t.”

Part The Second: Let’s Go Visit the Boardwalk

Pause for a second while I explain the layout of the aquarium. The land is on a slope, so the big outdoor tanks in the back are one story below the entrance and boardwalk. There is a path from one area to the other. Just in front of the tanks, the path passes underneath part of the walkway above.

There is a chain link door across this part that we close up at the end of the day. It reaches up to just under said walkway.

The boy decides that he wants to go back to the upper level. And he doesn’t want to bother taking the long path back to the ramp. No, this child CLIMBS UP THE DOOR like an iguana to try and reach the boardwalk from below. When I spot him, he’s already halfway up this swinging, unstable door.

Me: *Stunned and unsure what to do here.* “Um? Kid? Y-you should really get down from there…”

At that point, blessedly, the aquarium director passed by and saw what was going on. He managed to coax the kid down. I retreated to my coworker, shaken, as Mr. Director ripped Mommy a new one.

Me: “Did that really just happen?”

Coworker: “Let me tell you about what they got up to earlier this morning…”

I sincerely hope that kid survives his egg donor’s negligence long enough to develop his own sense of self-preservation, cause she sure ain’t teaching him.

My parents are bringing my younger siblings and me to the aquarium. One of the staff members is giving a talk about the crabs they have in the rock pool, with some live demonstrations.

Aquarium Staff: “And it’s these adaptations that make the crab such an effective predator. In fact, there’s a consensus among biologists that several routes of evolution all develop towards a crab.”

My dad, the long-suffered prankster, raises his hand.

Dad: “Scientists realised that and tried to speed things up by combining crab DNA with that of a cheetah.”

Aquarium Staff: “I bet things went sideways real fast.”

My dad stands there motionless. No one has ever stolen his dad joke punchline before. His face says it all.

Aquarium Staff: “I’m a dad too, mate. Plus, I work with crabs. Heard ‘em all. Anyway, who wants to see the giant spider crabs?!”

My dad was sulking the rest of the day.

This story is part of our Editors’-Favorite-Stories-Of-2025 roundup!

Read the next story!

Read the roundup!