# Utahs Great Salt Lake **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 3, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199 "2006-01-03T06:25:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jeffr062](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f04885/32.png) [@Jeffr062](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeffr062)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/1 "2006-01-03T06:25:52Z")
Do any animals live in Utahs Great Salt Lake? ---
**Author:** ![boytyperanma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/2 "2006-01-03T07:08:44Z")
yep and in the summer you can smell them rotting. My sister who lives there refers to it as the great stinky lake ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/3 "2006-01-03T11:15:36Z")
The Great Salt Lake has a multi-million dollar [brine shrimp](http://ut.water.usgs.gov/shrimp/) industry. And several species of [waterfowl](http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/tharrison/gslplaya99/) feed on them. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/4 "2006-01-03T11:34:47Z")
The brine shrimps are better known as Sea Monkeys. They do not resemble monkeys and do not wear crowns. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/5 "2006-01-03T12:48:32Z")
AFAIK, the only things that live inthe GSL are the brine shrimp and whatever microorganisms they eat. There are gazillions of the shrimp in the Lake. They resemble the little feathers from your pillow, with two little black dots (the eyes) at one end. There must be several dozen in every cubic foot of the lake in the summer. For a brief period after the great floods of the mid 1980s the regions of the lake near the places where the freshwater mountain streams fed into it were so diluted that fish (from the streams) could live in them, but that didn’t last. Outside the lake itself there’s ligfe. At the very edge of the lake is a cloud of tiny black flies, eating, I assume, the remains of dead brine shrimp and whatever _they_ eat. There’s also a crowd of Utah’s omnipresent seagulls (the “waterfowl” mentioned above – I’ve never seen any other birds around the lake, myself. Caling gulls “waterfowl” makes them sound too much like pheasants or something) ---
**Author:** ![Serket](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Serket](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serket)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/6 "2006-01-04T19:41:43Z")
Wikipedia has an article on the [Great Salt Lake ecosystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake#Great_Salt_Lake_ecosystem) and there is also [Pink Floyd the flamingo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake#Pink_Floyd_the_flamingo) ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/utahs-great-salt-lake/338199/7 "2006-01-04T20:57:35Z")
I’ve encountered some pretty good sized rattlesnakes and a badger driving along the dirt roads around the lake. They were though “around” it and not “in” it.