Uncle Milton, the ant farm tycoon, is selling an "Aquasaurs" (real name: Triops longicaudatus) habitat. These creatures are much cooler than Sea-Monkeys.
According to this FAQ :
Triops longicaudatus are crustaceans that are also called Dinosaur shrimp or Tadpole shrimp that look like miniature horseshoe crabs. They have a short life-cycle of 20 to 90 days – growing very quickly in this time to about 2 inches in length !" Link
(Thanks, Jonathan!)
UPDATE Andrew sez: "American Science and Surplus has had triops for sale for some time. The same as Uncle Milton's Aquasaurs that Mark recently blogged, but for only 8 bucks. I ordered them a couple of years ago and they were a lot fun. An added upshot is that sciplus has a 10 dollar minimum order so you can order some other cool stuff while you're at it, and there's plenty of other cool stuff (I have no affiliation with sciplus, just love their stuff)." Link
UPDATE Simon sez: "My God, are you completely insane? Triops are the vilest creatures that have ever lived. Someone gave me a set, and they immediately hatched into hundreds of awful little crawly things with big teeth and millions of incessantly moving legs. A friend said "Triops: worlds most awful pets." And he was right – their food is sea monkeys, for pete's sake. You can't clean the tank because they eat the brown sludge that forms on the bottom, they eat each other, and they eat goldfish if you put them in the tank – the instructions say so. After a few weeks all you can see in the vat full of filthy water is two inches of sludge with little tracks moving through it where the triops are. When two meet there is a brief explosion of activity and only one track leaves. Sometimes bits of the loser drift out of the ooze. Eventually all life in the tank ceased and we threw it into a dumpster with immense relief. I still shudder when I think of those awful things.
If you like triops you would probably like a suggestion by the same friend: body crabs raised on a sock stretched over a forty watt lightbulb. I added that, unlike triops, when you got tired of them you could kill them with Raid, but he countered with "Oh, no, you can't kill crabs with Raid. Believe me, I should know." Not a pleasant thought, but a walk in the park compared to having a stinking vat of thrashing triops on one's kitchen counter.
Hmmm … how to end politely…
Thanks for an interesting article,
Simon"
