Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works a brain stuff. It's Christian Seger. Have you ever wondered what sea monkeys are, Well, look, I'm here to tell you they're not monkeys. It turns out they're actually brine shrimp, which are these pretty cool little creatures in and of themselves. And Brian shrimp are found in salt lakes. These are little lakes that are so high in salt content that you usually only find these brine shrimp and the algae they feed on living
in there. Nothing else can survive, which makes the brine shrimp and their algae friends extreme A files cool name, right. The other cool thing about Brian shrimp is that they can survive up to twenty five years encapsulated in what are known as cysts. These are these kind of protective layers that form around their eggs, and a lot of Brian shrimp just kind of sit there in suspended animation, and the cysts can actually dry out and survive just sitting there on the vast drive planes of the salt
lake in Utah. Now, when you get sea monkeys, that is what comes in the packet. Add some salt water and the egg hatches and within about eight to ten days, you have a fully grown, half inch Brian shrimp a k a. A sea monkey. So now you know. Sea monkeys are not monkeys, but they are Brian shrimp and Brian shrimp. They're pretty cool. Check out the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com