Sea Monkey Evolution Hi-Jinx

A very funny discussion of Sea Monkey Evolution at www.fairyshrimps.com.

The Post "Why did Sea-Monkeys go from living jungles back to living in the sea?

Was this because the only other mammals in the oceans were whales and dolphins… Or was this an evolutionary step, and the result of the introduction of some new predator on land?

Simply fascinating creatures."

brought the comment:

"Ah, you’ve fallen for the common mis-conception about so-called "sea-monkeys", because of their silly name. This is extraordinarily irritating to those of us who have a bit of biology, because, of course, they’re not monkeys at all, but are actually New World Apes (not to be confused with the Old World Apes like Baboons and some Europeans) which have returned to the ocean. The history behind this is fascinating and little-known (at least until my forthcoming blockbuster book/movie comes out, co-authored by, and starring, Sarah Palin, next year) – it seems that when the Central American isthmus arose thousands of years ago, connecting North and South America and exposing the great, peaceful South American Empire of the Last Dinosaurs to the depradations of the vicious herds of giant carnivorous sloths and tapirs that roamed the great plains of North America, the defenders of the huge but placid Ceratosaurs, the great, intelligent New World Apes known as the Howling Spider Apes, which defended the Empire with their paleolithic axes and laser guns were driven into the sea while fighting their untimately doomed battle to preserve their way of life and their lovable masters, to whom they had pledged their lives and their sacred honor in a moving ceremony commemorated and memorialized in the fantastic stone carvings on the ziggurat of Micchu Moucchu found in the 17th century deep in the jungles of Patagonia and from which Thomas Jefferson drew much of his inspiration for the Declaration of Independence, and were forced to develop gills using their advanced biomolecular cloning techniques to survive, simultaneously growing smaller to escape the attentions of the terrible Antedeluvian Period predators such as the Great Killer Whale Shark, which roamed the waters of the southern North Atlantic in huge swarms, devouring anything bigger than a small tuna or caped cod which happened to carelessly get in their way, but which are now no more than a memory after the terrible Shark Flu epidemic of 731 BC which was caused when a flock of Passenger Pigeons (which were riding on the backs of a remnant, but overloaded, herd of Quetzalcoatlus for their semi-annual migration to their wintering grounds in what is now known as Upper Volta) fell into the sea and were messily devoured, infecting the sharks with their particularly virulent variety of Bird Flu that spread from shark to shark due to their rabies-like reaction to being infected until they were extincted to the last fish, but leaving the now-tiny Sea-Monkeys (as they became known to the first protohumans which timidly left their sea-side trees to watch the "Sea-Monkeys" frolicking in the Atlantic surf).
I hope that this answers your question sufficiently thoroughly. We aim to please."

Ha ha. Great stuff.