I did not know there are mail order packages for that. I only knew of those sea monkey things, had one of those as a child myself.
We had to shoot time lapse because we did not know when/if it would hatch and this way we could fit a few hours of filming on the card. This is a 8x speedup if I remember correctly.
Yes, he has a knack for putting ideas together. In this case it was fascination with the process and the use of technology. Gotta be careful he won't turn himself into a borg one day.