What are they? What are they used for? What is their purpose? Do they do anything? They look like specks to me, but I hear of people keeping them as pets and stuff. Do they grow into something, or what?
2007-04-01 16:47:48 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Zoology
Sea monkeys are actually brine shrimp, an arthropod that can live in very salty water. They naturally live in hypersaline lakes like the Great Salt Lake. In that ecosystem the brine shrimp are very, very important parts of the food web.
If you just see specks, they'll still grow up more. People raise brine shrimp to feed to their tropical fish, and some people have them as novelty pets. They aren't going to live a long time, though.
2007-04-01 16:52:22 · answer #1 · answered by ecolink 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Sea-monkeys are a type of brine shrimp. They swim around and they will breed, laying eggs.
They were actually marketed back in the '50s as kind of an "instant pet". You bought a kit, which was various types of salt, soda and yeast, along with "eggs", which were the sea monkeys in kind of a suspended animation that these brine shrimp are able to enter under the right conditions. Adding the elements of the kit to ordinary tap water brings the sea-monkeys back to life.
Comics in the '60s and '70s showed advertisements for these kits. The sea-monkeys in the ads looks rather humanoid, nothing at all like the brine shrimp hybrids. They also do not resemble monkeys.
Supposedly, they can live up to a year.
I believe they are still commercially available from a company called "Education Insights".
2007-04-01 17:02:15 · answer #2 · answered by T 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sea monkeys are brine shrimp, and they have a number of uses. The main use I know of is they are used to feed fish in aqariums as they are small enough for some species to eat. They come from brackish water areas and clean up the debris and algae that form in the water. Some varieties of sea monkeys are different though, and can grow up to one inch long! They do make neat pets and are fun to raise. I hope this helps,
Maraleh
2007-04-01 17:22:09 · answer #3 · answered by Maraleh H 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I got some as a kid and it was a big joke. I got a little tank with a light with their eggs and food. I had to keep the eggs in there with the light on for so long and they finally hatched. They were stupid little things that had a fin on the back and swam around. There were only 2 or 3. The tank had a magnifying glass on it to view them better and it didn't help. They died in no time. They're like the other guys said, brine shrimp and very small. You can't eat them!
2007-04-01 17:18:26 · answer #4 · answered by freekin 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
sea monkey is a species of monkeys its very microscopic so u prob need a magnifying glass to see them. but they like to swim around especially in acquariums u can buy them sometimes at walmart.
2007-04-01 21:03:16 · answer #5 · answered by RaymondFelton 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋