Are they really alive?
...is the question I get asked a lot when people look at the Sea Monkey tank on my desk.
Well, yes, there they are, swimming around peacefully, with their fin-like appendages, looking at us with their beady black eyes, of course they're alive.
"A true MIRACLE of nature, Sea-Monkeys® actually exist in SUSPENDED ANIMATION!" - the Official Sea-Monkey Handbook
But "are they really alive?" is the question that kept me baffled when I was seven and had seen ads for Amazing Live Sea Monkeys!® in those American comics where the ad pages were more interesting than the cartoons themselves - X-Ray Specs, machines which turned ordinary paper into dollar bills, and, Ohmigod, Sea Monkeys - for the piddling sum of a dollar (not that I had one), I could receive in the post a sachet of dried eggs, which when added to water would hatch out into Instant Life® which apparently consisted of families of cheery naked pink lanky creatures with webbed toes, crowns and freckles. No, really.
So they are actually alive?
Years later, I finally got my hands on a kit: for a fiver these days you can get a Micro-View-Ocean-Zoo (the names haven't changed much since the 70's) from many toy shops.
And it's almost true, with a bit of attention paid to the instructions, you get a small tank full of little creatures which bear no resemblance to the freaks on the packets, but are a good deal more appealing, with their frilly appendages, feathered heads, beady black eyes, etc.
Once the water has been prepared by adding Sachet 1 - Water Purifier and 24 hours have passed, you are ready to add the eggs from Sachet 2. The contents resemble nothing more than white dust, and it's hard to believe that living animals are about to come into existence from it. Never mind, onwards.
(Full instructions available from
Sea Monkey Central)
And heavens above, within a few hours, there they are - little white dots moving around with a distinctive jerky motion. You'll see them grow rapidly, after a day, loads of them will be clearly visible, and after a week their features are distinguishable. Within a month, they'll be nearly 2cm long! Amazing. Your very own brine shrimp colony, all from a tiny packet of dust with an invisible spark of life in it. You begin to see why the Official Sea Monkey Handbook favours exclamation marks so much.
I read in a few places theories on why Sea-Monkeys swim upside-down, and this baffled me at first - they seemed to me to be swimming along most elegantly, with their heads held high and their appendages wiffling delicately behind them. What did people mean by upside-down? |
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It was only when I saw them flipping over to inspect the bottom of their tank that I realised what people meant - they really look like shrimp when they are upside-down (or is that the right way up?) - ugh. It's like one of those optical illusions - like the one which shows a young lady and an old woman at the same time. You know what I mean. | |||||||||
Anyway, these commercial Sea Monkeys are laboratory-developed, genetically modified brine shrimp, Artemia nyos. The ones found in the wild by the way are Artemia salina. | ||||||||||
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But that's not all! In the absence of male brine shrimp, the females can produce fertilised eggs in a process known as parthenogenesis, which then hatch out into new shrimp. Well I never. | ||||||||||
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Links: | ||||||||||
The Sea-Monkey Answer Lady's brilliant site - if you visit one link from here, make it this one. Nostalgia at the BadFads.com museum The story of how Sea Monkeys started as a children's toy | ||||||||||
