Peewees!

My Sea Monkey colony was doomed.  After all the eggs had hatched, there were two females and six males.  Over the next two months I found a new little corpse in the tank every couple of weeks until I had four left: all males.  That was it, then.  They were on palliative care until the last little shrimp gave up the ghost and floated to the bottom of the tank.  I was not looking forward to that sad day.

Of course I abandonned the idea of letting my co-worker adopt the tank.  You can't expect someone else to take over a doomed project voluntarily.  I made my peace with the cycle of life, and tried to take care of the little guys as best I could so that their last days would be happy.

When I found the males "hugging", I thought they'd gone gay out of desperation.  I suppose one or two of them could have been gay all along, although I'd never seen that behaviour when the girls were still around.  Good thing my house is LGBT positive.  They may as well have some fun.

Yesterday, after bubbling the tank (they need their daily dose of oxygen), I did a head count.  I've been checking every few days to measure the progress towards Total Extinction.  I noticed something unusual about one of the Sea Monkeys.  It looked as if he had sprouted ovaries overnight.  What the...?

Then, as I squinted into the tank, I noticed something even more amazing.  Peewees!  Lots of them!  Translucent little squiggles no bigger than a comma, motoring purposefully around the tank.  The previous two females were mated plenty, believe me, but there were never any babies.  No new Sea Monkeys had shown up since the initial packet of dried eggs was dissolved into the tank.  Now, it's a Sea Monkey Miracle!  The colony is saved!

I checked online and found two conflicting sources of information.  There are online references to a few scientific papers that seem to indicate that shrimps can be hermaphroditic.  Did my new momma start out as a boy?  The official Sea Monkeys website makes no mention of this possibility.  The Sea Monkeys fan website states that it's a fallacy - boys who turn into girls were girls all along; they were just late bloomers.

If she was a late bloomer, she was awfully late - a full two months behind her sisters.  In the Sea Monkey life span, that's like 7 human years.  But, I guess it's possible.

I'll never know exactly what happened, but I don't mind.  I'm just happy that my tank is filled with cute, healthy peewees.  I'm no longer tempted to give the colony away.  I guess I'm attached to them after all.