A man who got Sea Monkeys said he felt 'creeped out' by a discovery he made when he started putting his little aquatic pets under the microscope.

You all know what Sea Monkeys are, and it's very possible that you had some as a pet at some point.

They don't live especially long in the grand scheme of things, so any you had as a child are long dead now.

I once had Sea Monkeys for a couple of years after getting them as a birthday gift, but eventually the biggest of them started hogging all of the food and it left the others (including its own babies) to starve to death. Then it died of what I can only assume was a combination of loneliness and old age.

Anyhow, YouTuber Picocosmos got some Sea Monkeys and started putting them under the microscope as they grew so he could get a better look at what was going on inside their tank.

Aww, look at the Sea Monkeys. (YouTube/Picocosmos)

Keeping several tanks of Sea Monkeys, he spotted that they were growing gunk and algae from the bottom which actually turned into an ecosystem the little shrimp creatures could feed from.

However, putting this gunk under the microscope showed him something that 'kind of creeped him out a bit'.

What he found wriggling around down there were nematodes, tiny little parasitic roundworms that live all over the world including beneath his Sea Monkey tank.

They start doing a bit more once they get to be six months old, as they might start fighting over who gets the ladies in the tank.

If after about six months of having them you see a pair of Sea Monkeys stuck together and only one of them has whiskers then that's a mating pair and you might be able to expect more Sea Monkeys in the future.

If there's anything you ought to be 'creeped out' by when it comes to Sea Monkeys it's the man who invented them, one Harold von Braunhut.

Look at the wriggling little worms. (YouTube/Picocosmos)

As well as deciding that Sea Monkeys would be a great children's present, he also invented a number of other gifts for kids including X-Ray specs, a monster card that grew hair when you put it in the water and the 'invisible goldfish' which was just an empty fishbowl and some fish food.

He also bought weapons for the Ku Klux Klan and regularly attended neo-Nazi groups.

The inventor of Sea Monkeys being a massive white supremacist wasn't something he even tried to hide, when asked about it in an interview he once said: "You know what side I'm on. I don't make any bones about it."

Folks have said their childhoods were ‘ruined’ after finding out the dark truth behind the popular toy Sea Monkeys.

Remember Sea Monkeys? They were a staple for kids for Christmas and birthdays: a cute plastic tank that came complete with three packets and allowed you to create life.

After filling the tank with water, you could add the ‘water purifier’ sachet and once that had done its job, you could pop the Sea Monkey eggs in, too.

Finally, once the Sea Monkey, which were actually brine shrimp, were alive and kicking, you could use the included food pouch to make sure they didn’t starve.

If you managed to avoid knocking the whole thing over, you’d end up with a tank of tiny little creatures - that did not look anything like the depiction on the front of the box.

Despite the fact that it was less of a toy and more of a heartbreak when they inevitably died after a couple weeks - Sea Monkeys remained incredibly popular with a whole generation of kids growing up in the 1990s and 2000s.

However, the popular practice pet has a pretty dark truth behind it, as they were invented by an American man by the name of Harold von Braunhut.

Amazon

Von Braunhut was an inventor of a number of bizarre gift ideas for children including X-Ray glasses, a monster card that would grow hair when you added water and the 'invisible goldfish' which was just a fishbowl and some food.

Alongside that, it turns out, he was also a massive white supremacist.

Sorry folks, but the inventor of Sea Monkeys bought weapons for the Ku Klux Klan and regularly attended neo-Nazi groups.

He didn't try to hide it either, as in an interview where he made racist statements he then said: "You know what side I'm on. I don't make any bones about it."

Yep, it’s tough to learn, isn’t it? But here we are.

Wikimedia Commons

As you can imagine, the discovery has not gone down well with those of us who did own Sea Monkeys - as one person put it: “Can’t say that. That’s ruined my childhood, like.”

On X, people were also left unhappy after finding out the truth, with someone posting: “Just found out the inventor of Sea Monkey may have been a Nazi, there goes a piece of my childhood.”

A second wrote: “Today in another instalment of ‘childhood ruined’ I found out that the guy who created Sea Monkeys was an extremely prolific neo-Nazi.”

Sorry, guys.

A woman shared the somewhat harrowing experience she had after buying herself some Sea Monkeys.

You may remember the beloved toy, which came with a tank and three special packets that, when combined, would hatch a bunch of adorable little ‘Sea Monkeys’ - although you may not be as aware about the dark truth surrounding its creator.

For those of a certain age, Sea Monkeys, which are actually brine shrimp, were a birthday and Christmas present staple for many of us growing up.

And one woman decided to relive her childhood and bought herself a Sea Monkey as an adult back in 2020 - but she was met with tragedy just over 100 days later.

Taking to TikTok Katie Feeney, shared the sad story with her seven million followers explaining that it all began in May 2020, when she bought the kit and set it up using the sachet of water purifier and adding the eggs.

Four short days later, the eggs began to hatch and Katie made sure to add the ‘growth food’ to ensure her little brine shrimp… erm... I mean, Sea Monkeys would grow big and strong.

TikTok/@katiefeeneyy

Sharing an update of what they looked like after 13 days, Katie said: “From then on they just kept growing and growing and growing.”

So far so good, right? Katie even introduced her pet dogs to the Sea Monkeys, although they didn’t look too impressed, to be fair.

But this is when things took a turn, with Katie going on: “Unfortunately, after 58 days I noticed something was wrong: the Sea Monkeys started disappearing.

“There were some very big ones in the tank but all of the small ones were gone.

“After 75 days, there were only a couple of Sea Monkeys left and on day 97 the only two Sea Monkeys that remained were connected.

“Sadly after 123 days the Sea Monkey journey has come to an end.”

The clip soon attracted plenty of comments from folks who had similar Sea Monkey experiences, with one follower saying: “I am so sorry that happened to you. I know how it feels”

Another said: “Same thing happened with mine. Timeline of death too. I had babies and they were eaten. Even though the last remaining two had food.”

While a third commented: “Mine ate each other.”

Others offered her advice on how to better look after the Sea Monkeys, but I guess it’s probably a bit late for that.

Chilling footage has been released of the moment where an underwater camera was gripped by a deep-sea creature.

It's things like this that make people scared of the sea, and it's worth noting that we as humans have only explored five percent of the world ocean, according to NOAA Ocean Exploration.

To think about how many creepy and scary creatures live in the depths of the sea, and the fact that there's a high possibility that there are even more that we don't know about - which scientists might not ever discover.

People are already scared by clips just a few metres below sea level, revealing how fish react to seeing a camera, or in some cases, bits of food.

The latest bit of breath-taking footage has been released by scientists from the University of Western Australia and Kelpie Geosciences in the UK, that has left viewers stunned.

In a clip that rivals a sub's interaction with an ancient deep-sea creature up close, where scientists could see its eye, this ranks highly among creepy-yet-educational ocean exploration videos.

It is said that creature mistook the camera for prey in the South Pacific on Wednesday 8 May, with Associate Professor Stewart stating: “As we were reviewing the footage, we realised we had captured something very rare.”

So much of the sea has been left unexplored. (Getty Stock Photo)

In the video, a rare squid can be seen wrapping its arms around a camera 1026m below the surface, where it is almost pitch black.

It's not just any rare squid though, known as the Taningia Danae, it can be seen making its approach towards the camera and spreading its tentacles over the camera lens, seemingly thinking that it was something that it could eat.

The species is known for having two incredibly large photophores on the end of two of its tentacles that produce bioluminescence, which have also been described as 'headlights'.

They are the largest known photophores in the known world, and are also known to produce flashes in the dark ocean to disorientate prey while hunting, which can also be seen in the video.

Two angles of the footage highlighted just how massive the squid was. (UWA/Inkfish)

The equipment captured two angles of the squid wrapping its tentacles around the lens, one from the scene and one from behind, showcasing just how massive the squid is.

Also known as the Dana octopus squid, it is one of the largest known squid species, able to reach a total length of 2.3m. The largest known specimen weighed a whopping 161.4kg.

The Red Sea has a chilling secret which has only just been discovered by the scientists studying the bottom.

The Sea, which is located between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, is home to a fruitful and fascinating ecosystem.

Based in Egypt, it's home to an incredibly busy shipping lane, with the traffic going through the Suez Canal.

It's a beautiful location, and is named aptly because it comes from the seasonal red blooms of algae, which change the water from its blue-green hue to a red.

However, if you dive deeper, it's not quite the same.

This is what people realised when scientists managed to find 'death pools' at the bottom of the sea.

The reason they are called that is because they're devoid of oxygen.

This means that any animal which is unlucky enough to venture nearby is stunned and killed by the pools.

But anything which is stunned but not killed will soon be picked off by predators, which lurk nearby to 'feed on the unlucky'.

That's a scary thought.

Make sure you don't swim too deep down there, folks.

Otherwise you'll be fish food.

That's not to say that there's nothing inside the 'death pools', which are home to 'extremophile microbes' that can survive down there where little else can.

Studying the death pools can help us understand how life on Earth began, and even the potential for life on other planets.

Sam Purkis, professor and chair of the Department of Marine Geosciences at the University of Miami, said: "Our current understanding is that life originated on Earth in the deep sea, almost certainly in anoxic — without oxygen — conditions.

"Studying this community hence allows a glimpse into the sort of conditions where life first appeared on our planet, and might guide the search for life on other 'water worlds' in our solar system and beyond."

The fact that the usual animals found at the bottom of the sea - such as burrowing shrimp, worms and mollusks - can't survive in the pools mean that they remain unusually pristine.

"Ordinarily, these animals bioturbate or churn up the seabed, disturbing the sediments that accumulate there," Purkis said.

"Not so with the brine pools. Here, any sedimentary layers that settle to the bed of the brine pool remain exquisitely intact."

This means researchers were also able to use their findings to help learn more about tsunamis and earthquakes.

The newfound brine pools 'represent an unbroken record of past rainfall in the region, stretching back more than 1,000 years, plus records of earthquakes and tsunami'.

Their findings suggest that in the past 1,000 years, major floods from serious rain occur about once every 25 years, and tsunamis [take place] about once every 100 years'.

Imagine that, down at the bottom of the Red Sea are pools largely untouched by the world above, tranquil and lethal in equal measure.

Additional words by Anish Vij.