![]() You only need the fish food to last as long as it takes for the fish to eat it. Hatching Artemia as fish food is not quite the same as hatching Artemia as a pet. ![]() This was a time when ant farms were popular, and von Braunhut was struck with the notion that maybe what ant farms needed was an aquatic twist. His muse… was a bucket full of fish food. And Artemia could have remained largely just a matter of fish food, except that in 1957, a man named Harold von Braunhut entered a pet store and left with an idea. That’s actually how we got ours: James, our master of microscopes, ordered a packet of about a million eggs on the internet and then concocted his own special briny mixture like a mixologist at a microscopic bar to give them the right conditions to emerge in. And Artemia eggs continue to be sold for fish cultivation. In the 1930s, a species called Artemia nauplii became the live fish food of choice for many. But back here on earth, the hardiness of those cysts makes them well-suited for the more mundane concerns of fish food. Scientists of course have done the obvious thing and sent these cysts into space, launching them aboard the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 moon missions to assess their hardiness against cosmic radiation and many of the eggs were able to hatch after that exposure, though with some deformities. With just the right mixture of salty water, the Artemia will emerge from its rest. And inside that cyst is a larva, fully-developed but kept in wait until the conditions are okay for it to leave the cyst. The second though, when the world around it is less comfortable, will be hard-shelled-a cyst. The first, when the world around it is comfortable, will be thin-shelled and quick to hatch. Female Artemia can produce two types of eggs. The Artemia’s downfall, if you want to call it that, is its own resilience. But Artemia also make for great food themselves, which is why they’re cultivated to feed fish being farmed for your own future meals or aquariums. And they spend their days seeking out their favorite food: algae. Artemia swim upside-down, and breathe through gills near the base of their limbs. And while their rebranding as sea monkeys is a more recent innovation, Artemia have been around for over 100 million years. While not technically a shrimp, the brine shrimp is a crustacean found in salty lakes and ponds. Now the “instant life” of the sea monkey is actually the achievement less of you or the people at Sea Monkey HQ, and more of Artemia salina, the brine shrimp. Just add Packet 1 to get the water ready, wait 24 hours, then add Packet 2…and voila, watch in amazement as they instantly hatch. Packet 1 contained the water conditioner, Packet 2 contained the eggs, and Packet 3 contained the food. All you needed, according to the original 1972 patent, were three packets. The premise is kind of immense, like you feel as if you are creating life, but the instructions were simple. But before we get to the organism behind all of this magic, let’s talk a little bit about the magic itself-the experience of “instant life” (as it was marketed) packaged into a toy. But that’s okay because we don’t need a professor to enlarge our sea monkeys. In fact, given that the show lasted only 11 episodes, I don’t know that anyone watched it. Now, not everyone had sea monkeys, just like not everyone watched the 1992 sitcom “The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys” about three human-sized sea monkeys and the professor (played by Howie Mandel) who enlarged them. And they were, I’ll be honest, pretty difficult to take care of. Of course, they were not called brine shrimp. When I was seven years old my dad helped me follow the instructions on an ad in, I think, a teenage mutant ninja turtles comic so that I could order my very own brine shrimp. That’s not a name that suggests a particularly exciting pet, but that did not stop me. Like, we all know that there’s kind of a feel to a dog person and a cat person. Pets are a matter of personal preference, but they’re also a bit about the branding. Because the interface of humanity and the natural world is always a very fraught place. We are about to tell you a story that you might think you know.but unless you know that the Ku Klux Klan was involved.you’re going to want to stick around. Journey to the Microcosmos is a Complexly production.
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