BLATANTLY false advertising... (withdrawn)

Dammit, New England Aquarium. You are NOT going to let me pet a hammerhead. Not even a very small one. Don't jerk me around.

This was a quick screen-cap I took of one of those annoying, in-your-face animated ads on Boston.com's homepage this morning. The hand descends and the shark comes up until they touch. Yeah, right. (click to embiggen)

(For the record, I would like to gather folks for a trip to the NEA to scope out the new Shark & Ray Touch Tank. I got to pet some sharks and rays at Monterey, and it was neat. The sharks are usually quite small and really not all that interested, but the rays are into it. You can see a video of it on the NEA website front page right now. But the whole hammerhead picture is silly. THERE WILL BE NO HAMMERHEADS. Phooey. I did get to see a couple of hammerheads at the Monterey Aquarium, and mostly my impression of them is: they like to hang around at the farthest reaches of the tank away from the windows, and harass the school-fish.)

CORRECTION: So that's what I get for ranting without going to look things up first. Apparently they DO have a bonnethead shark in the touch-tank. The bonnethead is "the smallest species in the family of hammerhead-like sharks". There is a little video of it at that link -- it must be like 2 feet long. AWWWWWWW. Well-played, NEA. I stand corrected.

Also, OMG OMG, I am SO THERE.