Triops, The Best Pet Crustacean (That Comes In A Kool-Aid Packet)?

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This brings back some slightly traumatic childhood memories. I got Triops from the Mickey Mouse magazine here in Germany over twenty years ago. It was all chill and fun until they started eating each other, leaving body parts floating around the tank. The ones that survived got HUGE, making the cannibalistic episodes even more visible and gruesome. In the end there were two of them left, one killed the other but left the body mostly intact. Both of them tried to eat me too when I stuck my finger into the water. The last one got bigger and bigger until it died as well and I had to bury this huge alien looking murder machine in the garden. I didn't want any pets for several years after that lol. Good times. Would give them another chance as an adult, they were quite cool despite everything

My science teacher in high school kept triops in a tank in the back of the class. He bought the packet at Wall Drug in 1979. He's been raising the decedents of that packet for over 40 years. He didn't start keeping count until a couple years after starting his colony but estimated (in 2014 mind you) that he was on approximately the 300th generation.

I never considered Triops for an episode, but i'm glad it got made! Hoping to see you cover Velvet worms at some point!

Saw those in the "wild" when i was small, in a drying rice paddy. Was instantly blown away by the strange looking things that looked like they belonged in the deep ocean or something, that somehow exists en masse in tiny puddles way too small for them, miles and miles from any sea. Witnessing the whole thing was just a bizarre experience, may as well have seen an alien invasion, a total mystery. It wasn't years later that i learnt of what they were. Still fascinating.

This could be my favorite collaboration we’ve done! 😁

I really hope we get an episode on hermit crabs soon, they're one of the few (kinda) bugs that can bond with their owner

I had eggs laying around in my basement from a triops kit I had as a kid (14 or more years ago at this point) and I jokingly tried to hatch them because I heard they can lay dormant from years and still hatch AND THEY DID

I'm 50 and raised brine shrimp and Triops as a kid. They care they require information has not changed much. That seems to be the only animal I cared for and raised whose care requirements were not needed to be updated.

15:54 "That is not dead, which can eternal lie and in strange eons even death may die."

That moment when you miss a few Clint videos and then you're dropped with Mantis are crustaceans, snakes are lizards, and birds are reptiles 😂 I need coffee and time to process that sentence

Great that you covered them! You can actually "handle" Triops by holding your (clean) hand into the aquarium and letting them swim/climb on it. It´s fun.

"The eggs have a built in conservation feature to not hatch if it rains too briefly". That's absolutely fascinating, wild, insane. Think about that, mother nature just wow.

You could probably base a whole community fishtank on ephemeral pool species like triops, fairy shrimp, and annual killifish

The triops lifecycle is very very similar to that of annual killifish. They usually live a few months instead of a few weeks, but it's the same idea: they live in temporary pools, hatching after the rains, grow really fast, breed like mad, then die as the pool dries up. They leave the eggs in the peat at the bottom of the pond. Killifish hobbyists send eggs to each other through the mail, then hatch them out themselves.

"its not rocket surgery" new favorite quote :D

A couple of the rice paties near me in california have a decent size population of endangered triops They are the vernal pool tadpole shrimp

Possibly my favorite of all the videos we’ve made together, Clint!

One of my favorite memories of hiking in Utah is discovering these little guys in a puddle, a couple days after a rainstorm. I had no idea what they were, and I don't think I had considered before that water-breathing animals could live in the middle of the desert. It was amazing to see!

Triops are wonderfully prehistoric looking.