Source: Houston Chronicle
GALVESTON — Moody Gardens reopens its Rainforest Pyramid today for the first time since October with a new insect exhibit featuring a bird-eating Goliath tarantula and a 4,000-square-foot butterfly tent. The pyramid will close again Sept. 6 and reopen the summer of next year with catwalks taking visitors through the top of the rainforest and a 6,500-square-foot Amazon otter exhibit.The opening today follows the completion of the first phase of a $25 million expansion of the Rainforest Pyramid, including the addition of the insect exhibit — Jitterbug! Spineless Wonders of the World — and a tent with 15 varieties of Texas butterfly, said Greg Whittaker, Moody Gardens animal husbandry manager.
Hurricane Ike severely damaged the Rainforest Pyramid when it struck Sept. 13, 2008. Salt water killed thousands of freshwater fish and 5 percent of the rainforest creatures, including several bats and snakes. Moody Gardens reopened three weeks after the storm, but the Rainforest Pyramid remained closed until April 2009.
The hurricane also delayed plans to build a $150 million glacier pyramid that would have re-created arctic climates, from snowy ice packs to frozen tundra.
Rain is optional
The Rainforest Pyramid closed again in October for construction of new features that will be on display today, including simulated rainforest showers with thunder sound effects. Guests will be warned through the loudspeaker system of impending rain in the Mayan ruins section of the pyramid. Those who wish to brave the downpour can bring raincoats or buy them at Moody Gardens.
Horticulture Exhibits Manager Donita Brannon said four tractor-trailer loads of new plants were delivered and planted over the last six weeks. New signs will point out rainforest plants with medicinal uses, such as the endangered Rosy Periwinkle from which is derived vinblastine, a drug used to fight leukemia and Hodgkin's disease.
Brannon said 25 percent of pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants in the fast disappearing rainforest, but only 1 percent of rainforest plants have been tested for medical uses.
The new insect exhibit will feature between 32 and 40 types at any one time, but the types will change as the insects live out life spans ranging from one month to one year and new specimens arrive. Many of the insects have vicious names, like the toe biting water beetle and the white-spotted assassin beetle.
When the pyramid reopens next year with skywalks through the rainforest canopy, visitors will see creatures otherwise not visible from the ground, such as iridescent blue roller birds and the 8-foot nests built by the oropendola bird, along with tamarins, marmosets and tree sloths.