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What are Sea Monkeys and how do they survive?

Question

What are Sea monkeys – those little dried shrimp-type organisms you can buy? How do they survive being dried? My four-year-old thinks they are amazing.
Stephen, Bishop’s Stortford

Answer

** Definitive **
Name: Elizabeth, Sutton
Qualification: Zoologist
Answer: They are a primitive shrimp-like organism, whose scientific name is artemesia. They live in temporary pools, so they have very resistant egg spores, which when the pool dries up, their eggs will persist for years. You buy the eggs in special spores, which when you add water, they hatch.