Strange Science

All right. I wanna see a show of digital hands.

Who has ever had a Sea Monkeys kit when they were growing up? Come on, don’t be shy!
Leave a comment and tell me about it!

I had a couple, if I remember well. I LOVED the little guys. I could sit and watch them for hours. I’ve been tempted to pick up another kit lately, but haven’t yet had the time.

Well, for any of you unfamiliar with the strange and fascinating world of Sea Monkeys, here’s a nice little shameless plug - I mean, official advertisement to show you how it’s done:

Aw, yeah - it’s a bit cheesy, but it sure looks easy, right?

Basically, these shrimp-like creatures live happily inside a custom tank with pure, clean water and yummy powder-food to keep them alive and well. They’re pretty cute from a distance, but they’re actually kind of creepy close up…

WHOA!

What I find most interesting is their locomotion - the way they move underwater. See how they move their many little legs? Lots of arthropods like shrimp and baby lobsters move like that, too. It helps direct microscopic food toward their mouths as well, so they basically eat as they go. Pretty cool, right?

Now, if these little chaps didn’t get your going “Ewww”, then this fellow might.

Enter the triops! It looks like something straight out of the days of dinosaurs, doesn’t it?

If you’ve got a hankering to get some of these pets for your own to observe and admire, be sure to go give the official Sea Monkeys website a look, and pick up some triops on your way. It’s well worth the money, especially if you love marine critters like I do. =P 

There’s a funny little microscopic creature known as the tarigrade, or water bear. It lives both on land, in the sea, on mountaintops, in solid ice, and almost everywhere inbetween!

It’s not the prettiest critter in the world, but it’s got one of the most fascinating abilities of anything I’ve ever heard of!

Thriving in a moisture-based world, most tiny animals like the water bear could be in big trouble if their source of life-giving water runs totally dry for too long. Not so for the water bear! The little guy will dry up, and take on a form not unlike dehydrated food - and stay that way virtually forever! All it would take is a single drop of water to revive and reanimate it, and it will go on its merry way again, wriggling along on its “clawed” little feet!