![]() ![]() To ensure the shrimp would live long enough to hold the imagination, the boffins also tweaked their very DNA, creating a species – artemia nyos (after the New York Ocean Sciences lab in which they worked) – that is not found in nature. Von Braunhut and d’Agostino came up with a way to turn ordinary tap water into an artemia-friendly environment, and would-be shrimp wranglers would be sent two sachets – one containing the brine shrimp and the other containing a powder which would turn their water into brine. Look, we know it sounds mad, but he made millions off it, honest! Von Braunhut had come across them when he visited a pet store whilst still in cryptobiosis, brine shrimp are used as fish food, but von Braunhut reasoned that, if the cryptobiosis could be reversed in the home, the little scamps would make ideal pets. Essentially, the creatures that would later become Sea-Monkeys were artemia, brine shrimp that entered cryptobiosis – a dormant state that reduces biological functions to an absolute, often undetectable minimum – when they were starved of water. Questionable politics aside, von Braunhut saw potential in his Instant Life product, and worked with a scientist named Anthony d’Agostino to develop it into a viable prospect. He was a keen white supremacist and was looking to add distance from his Jewish roots – the Washington Post reported that he bought arms for a Ku Klux Klan faction and regularly attended the annual conference of the Aryan Nations. You’d think that a Jewish American who had lived through the Second World War wouldn’t be so keen to play on his Germanic side, but von Braunhut wasn’t an ordinary Jewish American. Von Braunhut was born just plain Harold Braunhut but added the preposition to make him sound more German. The Sea-Monkeys story began in 1957 when, eager to cash in on the craze for ant farms that had exploded the year before, an intrepid inventor named Harold von Braunhut came up with the idea for ‘Instant Life’, an aquatic pet colony formed of brine shrimp. What kid could resist that? What kid wouldn’t want tiny humanoids, albeit with weird tails and antennae, living in the corner of their bedroom? What kid wasn’t disappointed when what they actually received was tiny, tiny shrimps that really didn’t do anything? ![]() These delightful creatures, called Sea-Monkeys (obviously because they resembled the ape-like beings in the ad art, right?), would be dispatched to your door, along with everything you needed to help them thrive and survive. Alongside offers to sell Grit magazine (what even was that?) door-to-door, trunks full of plastic army men, and X-ray glasses that would definitely allow you to see the girl-next-door’s private parts, was an invitation to grow your own friends. Simply click on the UK flag in the buy now section on the right.Whatever American comic books you read in the seventies and eighties, you couldn’t help but come across adverts for all kinds of wacky stuff. Replacement Sea Monkey refills are available at a special reduced price from in this event, regardless of where you purchased your original kit. My Sea Monkeys have died or failed to hatch, I live in the UK what can I do? We wish to thank George C Atamian, President of Transcience Corp, for his on-going help, advice and expertise with the information and images displayed on this site which is provided in conjunction with Transcience Corporation. Resulting from the most exquisitely sophisticated aquaculture technology, by true pioneers in this science, only the utmost resources of a leading marine biological research centre working for a span of many years has made this project a complete success. These amazing new hybrids grow larger and live longer than any "natural" variety of brine shrimp. We not only unlocked the most elusive secrets of their life cycle, we created new formulas to keep them alive under conditions found in the average home - an accomplishment never before achieved!įinally, after years of cross-breeding, we developed a hybrid. Sea-Monkeys® are a unique type of brine shrimp, known by the scientific name of Artemia NYOS. Conceived in 1960 as a biological novelty, the fantasy has transformed into brilliant reality. It is one of the outstanding educational experiences of a lifetime, because the entire life-cycle of these unique creatures are fully recreated. The joy of watching Sea-Monkeys® grow offers a lot more than just pure fun. Sea-Monkeys® are real Time-Travelers asleep in biological time capsules for their strange journey into the future! The instant-life crystals, in which the eggs are enclosed, preserve their viability and help to extend still further their un-hatched life span! They exist in suspended animation inside their tiny eggs for many years. Sea-Monkeys® are a true miracle of nature.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |