Showing posts with label triops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label triops. Show all posts

Thursday 19 December 2019

Our family and other animals: do we deliberately downplay other species' intelligence?

I recently heard about a project investigating canine intelligence, the results being that man's best friend can distinguish similar-sounding words, even if spoken by strangers. Yet again, it appears there is a less and less that makes our species unique: from the problem-solving skills of birds to social insects' use of farming techniques we find ourselves part of a continuum of life rather than standing alone at the apex.

Reading the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom's thought-provoking book Superintelligence, I was struck by his description of the variation of human intellect (from as he put it, Einstein to the village idiot) as being startling narrow when compared to the potential range of possible intelligences, both biological and artificial.

The complexity of animal brains has been analysed by both quantitive and qualititive methods, the former dealing with such measurements as the number of neurons while the latter looks at behaviour of members of a species, both in the wild and under laboratory conditions. However, a comparison of these two doesn't necessarily provide any neat correlation.

For example, although mammals are generally - and totally incorrectly - often described as the pinnacle of creation due to their complex behaviour and birth-to-adult learning curve, the quantitive differences in neural architecture within mammals are far greater than those between amphibians and some mammalian families. In addition, there are many birds, mostly in the Psittacidae (parrot) and Corvidae (crow) families, that are both quantitatively and qualitatively superior to most mammals with the exception of some primates.

I think it was the essays of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould that introduced me to the concept of EQ or encephalisation quotient, which is a label for the brain-mass to body-mass ratio. On these terms, the human brain is far larger than nearly all other species with a similar sized body, the exception (perhaps not surprisingly) being dolphins.

However, it's difficult to draw accurate conclusions just from examination of this general trend: both the absolute size of the brain and neuron density play a fundamental role in cognitive powers. For example, gorillas have a lower EQ that some monkeys, but being a large ape have a far greater brain mass. It could be said then, that perhaps beyond a certain mass the absolute brain size renders the EQ scale of little use. A 2009 study found that different rules for scaling come into play, with humans also having a highly optimal use of the volume available with the cranium, in addition to the economical architecture common among primates.

As historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out, the development of farming, at least in Eurasia, went hand in hand with the evolution of sophisticated religious beliefs. This led to a change in human attitudes towards the other animals, with a downplay of the latter's emotional needs and their categorisation as inferior, vassal species in a pre-ordained (read: divinely-given) chain of being.

By directly connecting intelligence - or a lack thereof - to empathy and emotions, it is easy to claim that domesticated animal species don't mind their ruthless treatment. It isn't just industrial agriculture that makes the most of this lack of empathy today; I've seen small sharks kept in a Far Eastern jewellery store (i.e. as decoration, not as future food) in tanks barely longer than the creature's own body length.

Although the problem-solving antics of birds such as crows are starting to redress this, most people still consider animal intelligence strictly ordered by vertebrate classes, which leads to such inaccuracies as the 'three second goldfish memory'. I first noticed how incorrect this was when keeping freshwater invertebrates, namely shield shrimp A.K.A. triops, almost a decade ago. Even these tiny creatures appear to have a range of personalities, or perhaps I should say - in an effort to avoid blatant anthropomorphizing - a wide variety of behaviour.

Now on the verge of setting up a tropical aquarium for one of my children, I've been researching what is required to keep fish in fairly small tanks. I've spoken to various aquarium store owners and consulted numerous online resources, learning in the process that the tank environment needs to fulfill certain criteria. There's nothing in usual in this you might think, except that the psychological requirements need to be considered alongside the physical ones.

For example, tank keepers use words such as 'unhappy' and 'depression' to describe what happens when schooling fish are kept in too small a group, active swimmers in too little space and timid species housed in an aquarium without hiding places. We do not consider this fish infraclass - i.e. teleosts - to be Einsteins (there's that label again) of the animal kingdom, but it would appear we just haven't been observing them with enough rigour. They may have minute brains, but there is a complexity that suggests a certain level of emotional intelligence in response to their environment.

So where does all this leave us Homo sapiens, masters of all we survey? Neanderthal research is increasingly espousing the notion that in many ways these extinct cousins/partial ancestors could give us modern humans a run for our money. Perhaps our success is down to one particular component of uniqueness, namely our story-telling ability, a product of our vivid imagination.

Simply because other species lack this skill doesn't mean that they don't have any form of intellectual ability; they may indeed have a far richer sense of their universe than we would like to believe. If our greatest gift is our intelligence, don't we owe it to all other creatures we raise and hold captive to make their lives as pleasant as possible? Whether it's battery farming or keeping goldfish in a bowl, there's plenty we could do to improve things if we consider just what might be going on in the heads of our companion critters.

Wednesday 24 June 2015

Sea monkeys: easy care pets or cheap lab animals?

As a former keeper of shield or tadpole shrimp (species Triops longicaudatus) in the UK, I miss the little blighters here in New Zealand, where they are banned as a biohazard. Although there is a rare native species, Lepidurus apus is apparently not suitable for keeping in household tanks; has anyone ever tried, I'd like to know?

Anyway, about four years ago I was looking for an alternative critter when I remembered someone at a party once mentioning sea monkeys, a hybrid species of brine shrimp suitable for keeping at home. Artemia nyos are very cheap to purchase and look after, with little in the way of paraphernalia required to keep them alive. (Incidentally, in addition to not being monkeys - obviously - they also don't live in the sea; the parent species are native to saline lakes.)

The most noticeable difference for me after Triops is that they don't require the frequent water changes that tadpole shrimp do. What's more they live somewhat longer: I've managed lifespans over six months, compared to just half that for Triops. In addition, sea monkeys can live in tiny tanks and so are the ultimate in pint-sized pets - or to be more accurate, three-quarters of a pint-sized pets.

Being only half the size of Triops, they require close-up observation; even with a themed tank, you are unlikely to get anything like a tropical aquarium experience. What's more, they refrain from digging motions and the other more interesting traits found in tadpole shrimp, mostly swimming on their backs, mating, or fanning through particles at the bottom of the tank for food. In fact, apart from some aquabatics, sea monkeys don't appear to have an awful lot to offer. For example, they don't have the range of behaviour that I've observed in individual tadpole shrimp, such as exuberant laps or hiding behind objects in the tank. Once you've observed them for a few months, the novelty begins to wear off, especially when they start dying in droves.

Therefore I thought that they might offer some interesting opportunities for scientific research with the minimum of apparatus. I initially tried a few changes - such as keeping a spotlight on at night during the first week of a new tank, partially for the warmth - but this was too informal to count as good research. I then started keeping a diary of the tanks, leading to a series of experiments aimed at finding the optimal conditions for maximising both number of individuals and longevity. I can't say that after three years' of research I have exactly found the brine shrimp equivalent of the elixir of youth but I've certainly enjoyed playing biologist, even if my methodology and laboratory conditions aren't quite up to professional standard (insert smiley here if you like).

Towards the end of the research period I explored some websites where other owners/breeders/keepers (delete as appropriate) had also experimented on the animals and their eggs. These raised some interesting questions, including concerns over the amoral nature of some practical science. Even so, it all gave me a good opportunity for to write this post!

For those without sea monkey experience, here's a brief summary of what is involved in their upkeep:
  • A commercial water conditioner is added to a 12 ounce/350ml tank containing non-chlorinated (in my case, bottled) water, although the conditioner sachet often appears to include some eggs.
  • A separate sachet of eggs is added a day or so later. The eggs usually hatch between two and five days after this, the water temperature directly correlating to the speed of hatching.
  • Some days after hatching, the shrimp begin to be fed miniscule amounts of powdered algae, the frequency depending on the number of adults.
  • The water level is topped up once every month or so with bottled water.
  • Ideally, the tank is aerated every one or two days, in my case using an 'aqua leash' included with one of the tank kits.
Sea monkey with eggs

So a fairly simple care regimen, then. None of my tanks have ever had more than seven adults at a time, which contrasts markedly with the congested tanks I've seen in internet videos. Whether it is the absence of light at night or cooler temperatures in general compared to other owners I'm not sure, but the lack of numbers was certainly not through a shortage of aeration or appropriate amounts of food, except during several months' of experiments as described in this summary of my research:

Q1: Could I raise sea monkeys using a ratio of water conditioner to water 30% lower than recommended?
A1: Negative. No eggs hatched. (See, I'm trying to use the correct scientific tone...)

Q2: Could I raise them using a tank substrate?
A2: Not wanting to waste eggs and conditioner I only performed this once, using finely crushed sea shells thoroughly rinsed in bottled water. No eggs hatched.

Q3: Did the brand of bottled water (with differing amounts of dissolved solids) make any difference to hatching numbers or longevity?
A3: Not noticeably.

Q4: Did a mature, mixed female-male population produce more hatchlings than a female-only population?
A4: Marginally, although after the initial hatching once a tank was set up, very few later nauplii survived more than a month.

Q5: Were, as I had read, the shrimp more photo-reactive when the tank was crossed by narrow beams of light in an otherwise dark environment?
A5: I saw very little evidence for this.

Q6: Did the distance from a window and direction/angle of daylight affect numbers?
A6: This was tricky, since around ninety minutes on a sunny window sill was all I allowed in order to prevent a tank transforming into a serving of Bisque du mer singe. But there was little evidence to suggest the amount of light altered the number or longevity of the population.

Q7: Did the tank temperature affect hatching numbers?
A7: I didn't want to use a normal tank thermometer, the tanks being so small, so I only had the fairly inaccurate sort that stick on the outside of aquaria. The only correlation I saw was that on colder nights it was better to keep tanks away from the window sill where it was obviously chillier than elsewhere in the room.

Q8: Did the frequency of aeration affect the population?
A8: I tried various permutations, from twice daily, to three times per week, to just once a week or even less, but this appeared to make little difference. Then again, I wasn't successful in raising more than five nauplii in any one 'mature' tank at a time, and so perhaps the population was too low to require greater oxygenation.

Q9: Did the feeding frequency affect the population?
A9: Again, I tried a range of schedules over several years, from once every five days to once per month. However, the low adult populations meant there was never any danger of starvation: their digestive tracts always looked full and at various times, individuals were accompanied by long strings of excrement. Hmm, nice!

Q10: Could I raise sea monkeys using a homemade water conditioner?
A10: This was the last experiment I undertook. I scoured the internet for the correct quantities of ingredients before trying several sea salt and baking soda ratios, but no eggs hatched after a month.

Head of a sea monkey

After I had completed these experiments, I searched the internet and found that my methods were rather tame compared to some of the research conducted on sea monkeys, and indeed brine shrimp species in general. Therefore here are some other potential experiments for those with the inclination:
  1. Try other foods, such as baker's yeast
  2. Try rain water or using self-created distilled water
  3. Conduct water quality tests (aquarium kits such as for the ammonia/nitrate/nitrite cycle)
  4. Egg hardiness, such as freezing and microwaving before attempting to hatch them*
  5. Different oxygenation techniques, such as blowing (not exhaling) a fresh intake of air through a straw.
*I'm too squeamish for this sort of thing. Does it make me a poor amateur biologist? After all, it's not as if I'm looking to cure diseases or any other really useful addition to humanity's knowledge; it's just some interesting minutiae on small invertebrates. Not worth putting them through it, really!

Although they are claimed to be easy to raise - indeed, other species are used for toxicity testing and their eggs subjected to cosmic ray experiments - I don't seem to have had much luck with breeding large populations (or in a rather more scientific tone, the condition of my tanks has proved to be sub-optimal). When one adult died, most of the other adults usually followed within a week. Despite frequent matings, lasting hours or even days and repeated several times per week, I've never seen more than five nauplii hatch in the same week in a mature tank. In addition, most seem to die after the first few instars, with very few reaching maturity. On the other hand, I once saw a tank with fully-grown shrimp belonging to a child who had added food daily but never aerated. Despite the water being obscured by thick algal growths, a few individuals managed to hang on in a presumably very oxygen-poor environment. Yet my zealous attention has seemingly had little impact!

So whilst they don't live up to the cuddliness of say guinea pigs, they are extremely useful as err...experimental guinea pigs, as it were, for the amateur biologist. And yes, watching the aquabatics can be fun, too!

Saturday 28 May 2011

Amazing animalcules: or how to create a jungle in a coffee jar

With frequently cloudy night skies preventing astrophotography of Saturn (even a few clouds are enough to ruin seeing, since they reflect the light pollution over London) I decided to head in the other direction, so to speak, and investigate the world of the very small. Last year my daughters and I had mixed success raising a batch of tadpole shrimp, a.k.a. Triops longicaudatus. Having seen the creatures lay their eggs in the adult tank, I kept some of the substrate in case we wanted to try round two this year. Therefore having had some warmer weather recently, I thought last week would be a good time for Triops Trek: the Next Generation.

Some enthusiasts - I can't really call them owners/keepers for such short-lived 'pets' - sift the half-millimetre diameter triops eggs from their tank substrate as if gold panning, but with the coral sand I used that frankly looked far too much like hard work. Therefore I just added about a 5mm deep layer of last year's substrate into a hatching tank of deionised water and hoped for the best. And...

...Success! Out of the thirty-five or so that hatched about half are still alive a week later, which surprised the hell out of me. The only problem being that the main tank is really only big enough for five or six adults. That is if they survive the transition and don't fall prey to problems with osmotic pressure, Ph balance, the nitrification cycle, etc, ad nauseum.

Meanwhile, a bit of research later, I discovered that each adult female (and most are) T. longicaudatus lays between 60 to 200 eggs per clutch. With up to one clutch a day, that's potentially an enormous number of eggs in my substrate. Looking at the nursery tank today I could see about sixty unhatched eggs stuck to the sides just above the water line, the latter having dropped slightly due to evaporation. All I have to do now is find a way of scraping them out...
Triops longicaudatus A.K.A. tadpole shrimps
Back to the current batch. The first problem was what to feed the nauplii (hatchlings for the uninitiated), as for the first few days they are too small to manage the shrimp food left over from last year's kit and I certainly wasn't going to bother buying anything. Luckily, last year I had found grow-your-own-infusoria instructions so had collected dried leaves from the local park during winter. So here's my recipe for happy hatchlings: collect some dead leaves, the more spore-covered the better; tear them into small pieces; soak them in rain or mineral water for three or four hours in a clean jar (e.g. coffee jar); tip out the water and dry the leaves; add them back to jar with fresh rain or mineral water and leave for three to four days. Voila - infusoria in abundance!

For those like me not in possession of a microscope, the best way to observe your new ecosystem (a slight Dr Frankensteinian moment) is at night. Place the jar against a dark background, turn off all the lights and view them via a torch and a magnifying glass with at least 3 times magnification. You'll be amazed at all the activity, especially the spiralling dance of the bdelloid rotifer. These half-millimetre creatures are extremely common but at this size it's perhaps not surprising that I've never noticed them before. There are hundreds of species, all of which seem to be asexual (or entirely female, depending on your viewpoint). But even these are just the tip of the diversity iceberg that is the world of the neo-microscopic. NASA has been experimenting on other similar-sized denizens, tardigrades, which can survive exposure to the vacuum, extreme temperatures and radiation of space. Otherwise known as water bears (despite their eight legs) tardigrades look more like a something off The Muppet Show than Doctor Who, but research has shown they can survive hundreds of times the lethal X-ray dose for humans, so perhaps long-duration spaceflights in the future will in some way benefit from the current endurance-testing of these remarkable little animals.

Back to the home-grown micro-jungle. Having reared a jarful of infusoria, I happily injected a few siphons' worth into the triops hatching tank. And then I felt a bit uneasy. I had heard that some fresh water aquarium owners breed triops just as food for their fish - perish the thought. And yet here I was, happily throwing the seals into the shark tank, as it were. Last year I had allowed a fairy shrimp and clam shrimp to go to their doom, along with countless daphnia (water fleas). So why was I worried now? Is there a threshold above which I consider a species should not become food (triops, obviously), whilst those below it can be eaten without qualms (clearly daphnia) and presumably bdelloid rotifers?

As a Westerner, I haven't grown up with Buddhist or other Eastern notions concerning animal welfare, ranging from veganism to reincarnation (although the latter clearly has self-interest at its core). Morals and empathy have a place in science too, and I consider pharmaceutical experimentation on animals as a necessary evil not to be thought about too often, but with the home-grown infusoria was it a case of size-based vulnerability or just cuteness that worried me how easily I had bred one animal as lunch for another? I suppose it's easy to argue that daphnia have the stigma of the name 'flea' with all its connotations, but the triops kit literature has an interestingly dismissive approach about associated fauna: it states that they won't live long (compared to triops, that is), but fails to mention that a primary reason for this is that the triops will hoover up the smaller species in next to no time.

Perhaps it was nothing more than the graceful, balletic movements of the rotifers that gave me pangs of guilt about serving them at the Café de Triops, but next time you pass a small puddle of dirty rainwater why not spare a moment's thought for the astonishing animalcules that live, largely unobserved, all around us? It really is a jungle out there!

Saturday 27 November 2010

Food for thought: the rise and rise of gastro science on television

As something of an amateur foodie (and with a professional chef for a brother), I've been interested to note the expansion of a new documentary genre in the last few years: programmes dedicated to the science and technology aspects of food. Indeed, the BBC seems to broadcast a new series on the subject every month or so, but why now and more importantly, are they any good?

As an answer to the first question, there must presumably be some knock-on effect from the small army of celebrity chefs: Jamie, Gordon, Nigella and their ilk, not forgetting Heston, ready to metamorphose into The Muppet Show's Dr Bunsen Honeydew at any moment. But is that enough to have generated a new genre out of nothing in so short a time? Health worries in general and the enormous growth (slight pun intended) in obesity in the UK are no doubt also responsible. With one in eleven British children apparently receiving treatment for asthma and alarming obesity statistics constantly in the headlines, it's little wonder our diet is being scrutinised in ever-increasing detail.

Another possible influence on the production of these programmes is the scientific-leaning campaigns by the prepared foodstuffs industry, cajoling us to stay healthy via the consumption of 'isotonic' drinks and food containing 'friendly bacteria'. Yet even a casual examination of the evidence suggests these products are as much a result of marketing as medicine, with benefits yet to proven in any serious sense. Indeed, in the case of pro-biotic foods there may even be potential side-effects. But back to the programmes themselves: do they provide any useful information to combat the hype and worry or are they just more cheap airtime to replace the cookery shows broadcast ad nauseum?

The programmes have covered a wide range of topics, but mostly steer clear of matter-of-fact detailing in favour of light-heartened musings, vox populi taste tests and experiments of the 'disgusting science' variety. A primary purveyor of the latter is the BBC's Jimmy's Food Factory, in which farmer Jimmy Doherty attempts to make processed food (and chewing gum) using supposedly household equipment and ingredients. It has to be said, watching chips being made via a gas gun and tennis racket is fun, but hasn't this more in common with Jackass than the Open University? Whereas Delia, Hugh, and the Hairy Bikers/Bakers et al make at least some effort to provide useful information, there's not much about Jimmy's explosive experiments that can aid us to make wiser choices as food buyers.

Other series that might attempt a more serious approach suffer from experiments using subject groups and/or timescales that are obviously too small for meaningful correlations to appear. Another BBC show, E Numbers: an Edible Adventure, is a prime example of this. Presenter Stefan Gates attempted to overdose of E numbers courtesy of a single day's junk food binge, only to find he'd mostly stayed within the recommended daily allowance for E numbers but had eaten over 400% of his fat RDA, 500% of his salt, and over 200% of his sugar intake. Now is that surprising? No wonder one reviewer found it 'maddeningly superficial'; it seems to have more in common with The Supersizers brand of infotainment than anything else. In fact, I seem to remember a single discussion on food additives whilst at school twenty-five years ago that was more informative than these three episodes.

It's not all doom and gloom: the BBC's The Truth About Food has gone some way to balancing the above, with a good book and website to match, but this is far and away the high point of the genre. It seems to me producers are missing a trick by not examining the current (and near-future) developments in food processing, from increased use of nanomaterials to cloned farm animals and in vitro slabs of lab-grown meat. This latter may sound a touch Frankenstein-ish, but beef flesh grown in a tank would presumably save on a lot of methane production. Then there's aquaponics, where the nitrogen cycle from farmed fish can help feed edible plants which in turn reduce the build-up of dangerous chemicals in the tank, something I learned about the hard way whilst breeding three generations of tadpole shrimps earlier this year.

So, in conclusion, the potential of television to educate whilst entertaining seems to have been once again been well and truly scuppered. One up for the Rupert Murdochs methinks, and a minus several million for the Lord Reiths. Doh!

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Sunday 2 May 2010

Scary Soap and Worm World: science toys for the young and not so young

There have been junior versions of telescopes, microscopes, and chemistry sets available for many years, but the past decade or so has seen a veritable explosion of science-orientated items for both children and the young at heart. It isn't just the likes of the Science Museum shop either: online retailers in particular offer a profusion of activities and experiments, ranging from extremely expensive assembly kits to grow your own crystal sets for under £10.

One of the interesting aspects to all this merchandise is how much of it follows a clear gender demarcation - 'disgusting' science for the boys versus perfume, incense and DIY toiletry products for the girls, with the stereotypical packaging pushing the delineation home. Although there are some products not for delicate (the bottom burp machine springs to mind), and a few of rather dubious taste such as soft toys shaped like E. Coli or the Ebola virus, there is an enormous array of items that promote science-based learning whilst providing lots of fun.

It isn't just inanimate activities that are available, but an increasingly range of experiments involving real animals. From Worm World via butterfly terrariums to ants in gel (based on a real Nasa experiment), children are now able to play biologist, farmer, even God, to a variety of creatures. The only project I have had direct experience of raised some interesting questions, as all good experiments should. As a starting point I had to consider my own relation to the project, since I'm not particularly keen on animal experimentation except as an absolute necessity; I was therefore fairly pleased to see that the instruction manual stated the creatures should be treated carefully, being after all living things. In the planning stages I also discovered a small but international community with a passionate dedication to their animals, but where for many the line between pet and subject lies, I'm still uncertain.

The species involved is intrinsically interesting due to its longevity: forget the coelacanth, if you really want to see a living fossil - in the form of an animal that has barely changed its external morphology in eons - then look to Triops longicaudatus, a freshwater shrimp that has been found fossilised in seventy million-year old rocks from the late Cretaceous. The shrimp-rearing products are marketed under a variety of names such as Triassic Triops (inaccurate - it is an even older sister species T. cancriformis that has been around since the Triassic), Dinosaur Shrimp (some fairly obvious marketing there), even Star Wars Naboo Sea Creatures!

Most kits consist of the same basic components: eggs (including those a few other, smaller, marine invertebrates), food, a container, and accessories. Unlike their smaller, commercially-available, crustacean cousins known as sea monkeys (actually brine shrimp), Triops even appear to exhibit signs of individualism, bizarre as it sounds for virtually blind creatures with a dust mote-sized brain. So although the kits are marketed at children over six years old, supposed adults such as me quickly find ourselves caught up in their well-being. In fact, the ability to raise and nurture the wee beasties is rather more complicated than the instructions would have you believe. A combination of light, temperature, oxygen and the right sort of water (distilled/deionised for hatching; bottled mineral water for adults) are merely the start of something that drove me to exactitudes not seen since school chemistry lessons. Unfortunately, this left my children with a somewhat backseat role, simply adding the food and observing with magnifying glasses through the increasingly murky water.

Of course engaging children in raising triops is good practice for said chemistry lessons, not to mention introducing them to the fundamentals of biology. Unlike some of the sad stories I discovered from other customer reviews, we did manage to raise three shrimps from egg to adult, although they all died around three weeks old (of a potential average seven- to ten-week lifespan). The project inspired questions concerning birth, reproduction - which is complex with triops and their female-biased or hermaphroditic populations - and death, in addition to providing examination of a miniature ecosystem and its food chain, daphnia being the rapidly-consumed base. One interesting outcome of all this was that it suggested youngsters (human, not shrimp) are not innately endowed with empathy, since my seafood-loving children asked if they could eat their pets after they died. Admittedly, they asked this before the animals were born, not after their death.

Although one individual died from moulting complications (despite a futile last-minute addition of iodine to the tank), there were no observable causes for the others' deaths, leading me to investigate optimal conditions in greater detail. However, I found it difficult to get agreement on even fundamentals such as the best water temperature and type of light cycle. The one book I could find (all of 30 or so pages long) doesn't go into details on raising them, whilst the most authoritative-sounding material elsewhere seems to negate the creature's 'wild' existence in many respects: after all, if their long-dormant, desiccated eggs come to life after a desert rain shower, then might not the night sky be dark due to rain clouds? Yet experienced breeders recommend 24-hour light for at least the first three days. It isn't just the minor carbon footprint of leaving an angle poise lamp on for days on end, but constant light leads to algal growth which clouds the water and may have other side effects. Clearly, those interested in breeding triops could benefit from rather more experimentation, since my children and I are hardly up to the role!

Interestingly, the only professional experiment reports I could find seemed more in the vein of the archetypal crazy scientist (think Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on The Muppet Show or The Fast Show's Professor Denzil Dexter: "We took some Triops eggs and froze them, but they still hatched, so then we boiled some more, and they hatched too. Then, when they were adults, we tested oxygen levels by super-gluing their carapaces…") I'm sure you get the picture. It has to be said that triops are useful experimental subjects for a variety of important reasons, from the here and now of fighting tropical diseases to the future of long-duration manned spaceflight involving astronaut hibernation. And if like me you're interested in trilobites, I think they're next best thing since the Permian extinction robbed us of those creatures some 251 million years ago. But as for "triops are instant pets - just add water" - that has to be a major understatement, and then some...

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