The packaging promises this:

watch them coyly hide within their shells!

The horrible, creepy reality:

My coworker Nick has Sea Monkeys, and I am perversely fascinated by them. They are disgusting little things that look nothing like the packaging, and I think they’re also cannibals: two of them grew alarmingly over the weekend (Nick calls the big one “Bitey”), and I’m pretty sure there were more smaller ones swimming around on Friday. I’ve been referring to them as sea lice (yes I know they’re actually brine shrimp) and I’m creeped out by them as much as I keep running back to look for new developments. I know the above pictures aren’t great, but they’re really hard to photograph on account of being creepy as fuck and relatively fast for something you grow in a swamp of yeast and salt. If they ever start line dancing or holding little Sea Monkey Time Share seminars, I’ll be sure to try and get more pictures .. but in the meantime, enjoy this slightly blurry exposé into the many-tentacled world of Nick’s horrible little sea bugs.