When I was a kid (in the 70s), magazines would advertise these creatures called “sea monkeys”. I never bought them but they have always been a source of confusion for me. The idea was that they would be mailed to you dehydrated, and when you put them in a fish bowl, they’d come to life, and presumably do all sort of tricks for you. Did anyone here ever have sea monkeys? What sort of life form could this have been?
I belive they are brine shrimp, I am sure someone will be along to elaborate any time now.
Sea Monkeys are/were brine shrimp. Nearly microscopic, they have very little brains. Certainly not enough to do tricks. Yes, they would survive a period of time dehydrated, one of the benefits of being a very simple living creature. I imagine a few little hearts were broken when the miracle Sea Monkeys turned out to be shrimp almost too small to see.
The much-celebrated “tricks” consisted mostly of phototrophism as I recall. What a thrill. It was like having a bowl of dust that swims to the light…
Well, now. Let me just go consult my… Sea Monkey Starter Kit! I picked this up on a trip to the hardware store last year and haven’t got around to hatching them. I’m a little afraid I might drink them one hung-over Saturday morning.
It has three packets: 1: Sea Monkey Water Purifier; 2: Sea Monkey Instant Live Eggs; 3: Extra Bonus Pack 1 Year Supply Sea Monkey Growth Food.
Directions are this. Dump water purifier into a twelve-ounce glass, “better still” a geniune Sea Monkey Aquarium.
Wait a day. Then, well, I think they say it best: “Are you ready for a real miracle? Add the contents of #2 Instant Live Eggs to the water and stir for one minute. With your own eyes you will see LIVE Sea-Monkeys being born. Follow all directions on back of Packet #2.”
Aeration is important. You can either dump the water from glass to glass, stir it with a plastic spoon, or purchase Item #70 - the “Million Bubble” air pump ($3.00). After the first seven days, the critters are supposedly able to “swim to the surface for air.”
The biggest trick they perform is to come to life out of a ramen noodle flavor packet. I actually had a few specimens grow to about a quarter of an inch, which is enormous by Sea Monkey standards. They look not unlike a white handled comb, with the teeth of the comb undulating to provide them limited motion. They will not provide hours of enjoyment.
They are a (supposedly) patented variety of the desert brine shrimp that only hatch during the rare rains. As a result, their eggs can lay dormant for a long time, and they reach maturity in something like hours. In the wild, they hatch, grow up, screw like mad, and lay another crop of eggs in the time it takes for a half-inch puddle to evaporate in the desert.
As a kid, there definitely was something interesting about a “grow your own life-form” kit. I had one set last for at least a couple of months. Overall, though, you’re better off going for the x-ray glasses which are also advertised in the backs of those comic books. Those are guaranteed to be completely disappointing.
By the way, you can contact the Sea Monkeys at:
Sea Monkeys
P.O. Box 809
Bryans Road, MD 20616
Maryland. I should have known.
Of course.
Ah, yes brine shrimp! The only things that could live in the Great Salt Lake. Only tourists swim in the GSL, because ever cubic foot of it is filled with hundreds of brine shrimp. In the GSL thy look kind of like feathers from your pillow with two back dots for eyes at one end. Then, when youre finished communing with the shrimp, you can get out of the tepid water of the Salt Lake and thrill as the water dries off, leaving the salt to crystallize on your individual body airs. You then walk through th solid wall of brine flies swarming at the edge of the GSL (they eat the washed-up dead brine shrimp) and look in vain for a shower so you can wash the sal and brine shrimp off.
You can still uy sea-monkey kits in nature stores. But if you want the n0-frill version, you can buy containers of brine shrimp eggs at pet stores – they sell them as “portable live food” for tropical fish and such.
Sea monkeys are of course Artemia Nyos, a special hybrid of brine shrimp, that just happens to be identical to all kinds of other brine shrimp. They do provide countless hours of enjoyment.
They grow to about 3/4 of an inch.
They can have sex all kinds of different ways. They can lay eggs, they can give live birth. They can change their sex, and they can reproduce without sex, providing actual virgin birth! Sure! Mankind is so superior, but we only allegedly did that once. Sea Monkeys do it all the time. Bet you don’t feel so superior now, huh?
Sea Monkeys breed prodigiously. They make good fish food. If you seal some Sea Monkeys airtight in a wine bottle 1/3 full of water, some algae and some bacteria, and place them in indirect sunlight, they can sustain in this environment forever! Forever! Can you do that? No, I didn’t think so.
After a couple of drinks, you can suck up Sea Monkeys in their “Water leash” and pour them into drinks and do Sea Monkey shots!
Sea Monkeys are cute, but they are also tough. Forget to feed them? They’ll cannibalize their dead! Water dries up? They hibernate? Somebody comes at 'em with a gun? They know Kung Fu. If a Sea Monkey had been on the Survivor Island it would have easily beaten the fat gay guy for the million bucks.
Sea Monkeys have what it takes to make it in the new Millenium. The gravitate to light. They feed they breed, they excrete. Like you do so much more, sure you do.
They are my friends, so don’t say anything bad about them.
Or to quote from the “Care and Feeding Handbook” -
SEA MONKEYS™ are no dream!
But they ARE a DREAM PET!
“Never trust a species that gets its young through the mail.” - J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
I find Sea Monkeys/brine shrimp to be mildly amusing. Good for a few minutes’ entertainment a day, at best. As Dr. Fidelius said, the “tricks” are actually displays of phototropism, the shrimp certainly don’t learn to do anything. The human keeper simply learns to manipulate the shrimp’s behavior. While this can be instructional, the novelty wears off quickly. Or at least it did for ME, when I first encountered them. But they’re a low maintenance…item. I can hardly call them pets.
Scylla, have you been in the Vicodin again? 