How do Sea Monkeys (brine shrimp) work?

★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://www.howstuffworks.com/question191.htm

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Each weekday Marshall Brain answers questions submitted by the readers of How Stuff Works in the Question of the Day section of HSW. You can also view previously answered questions in the HSW Question Archive. Here is today's question!

Question

A friend of mine gave me a package of sea monkeys as a gag gift for my birthday. I grew them, and they look nothing like the package but they really are alive! What are these things? How do sea monkeys work?

Answer

Sea Monkeys are really brine shrimp, and brine shrimp are an incredibly cool life form! Brine Shrimp are naturally found in salt lakes, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In a salt lake like this, the water is so salty that really the only things living in it are the brine shrimp and certain types of algae on which the brine shrimp feed.

One of the things that make brine shrimp fascinating is their ability to lay encapsulated eggs called cycts. A cycst can dry out and remain viable for years. If you put brine shrimp cysts in salt water, they hatch very quickly and the shrimp mature in about 8 days. They can grow pretty big - about half an inch (15 mm) long.

If you want to learn more about brine shrimp, these links are great!

Brine Shrimp
It's not a dead sea
The Brine Shrimp Project - grow your own!
The Official Sea Monkeys Web site!

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