Sea Monkeys Churning Waterbodies
When I was a child, I saw these ads for sea monkeys in comic books. I would’ve liked to have sea monkeys as pets back then. A “bowlful of happiness,” that was also easy to care for? What’s not to like?
There are monkeys in India but I definitely didn’t want one as a pet. Though they look wild, I knew they could be trained to do a variety of things: pick coconuts off a palm, pick peoples’ pockets, or dance in a dress to the beat of a tiny drum, the damuru. But miniaturize a simian, make it aquatic, and suddenly it held some appeal. The red bow for the lady sea monkey was a particularly nice touch. Alright these creatures don’t look anything like the rhesus monkeys I knew, so the name alone enticed me. I was a sucker for interesting-sounding words/phrases; I still am.
Good thing I couldn’t mail order these instant pets in India or I would have been in for some disappointment. Sea monkeys, scientifically known as Artemia Salina, do not resemble this illustration at all. These creatures that inhabit salt lakes are not mammals, they are very unattractive-looking crustaceans commonly known as brine shrimp.
Scientists have started to consider whether movements of small sea creatures—like krill bobbing up and down en masse— also contribute to creation of ocean currents along with mightier forces like winds and tides. Because plankton is hard to grow in the lab, scientists at Caltech who wanted to test this theory picked sea monkeys as a stand-in for krill in their test tank. By seeding the water with silver-coated spheres, the researchers could see the fluid flow produced by the herd of sea-monkeys. Those swirls were much larger than the animals — which are about half an inch long —the researchers reported in the journal Physics of Fluids. This finding suggests that larger groups of small sea creatures could, in fact, stir seawater by creating currents as they swim.
Not a bad use for sea monkeys, right?