The Mantis Shrimp The mantis shrimp is not a mantis or even a shrimp. It’s actually a Stomatop

The Mantis ShrimpThe mantis shrimp is not a mantis or even a shrimp. It’s actually a Stomatopod, belonging to the order Stomatopoda but as they are commonly referred to as mantis shrimp, thats how we will discuss them in this post. There are around 400 described species of mantis shrimp worldwide and although they are common, they remain poorly understood. Many species of mantis shrimp spend most of their lives tucked away in burrows or underwater crevices and are typically very aggressive. They have been known to inflict serious injuries on hands and fingers that stray too close to a mantis shrimps powerful claws. This is why they have been dubbed “the thumb splitter”. Most species of mantis shrimp grow to around 10cm in length although there are some species that reach sizes of 38cm. They come in a variety of colours such as reds, blues and yellows and some, like the peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus acyllarus), are multi coloured.The mantis shrimp exhibits a wide array of complex behaviours which vary from species to species. Some species of mantis shrimp only come together to mate, whilst others form monogamous, longterm bonds when reproducing. A monogamous pair can live together for up to 20 years and have 20 to 30 breeding cycles. In some species the pair will share the responsibility of protecting the eggs while in some species the female will care for the eggs whilst the male hunts for both of them.The Mantis shrimp can be placed into two categories; The spearers and the smashers. The spearers catch their prey by rapidly extending their raptorial claw, spearing and catching the pray with their barbed appendage. The barbs prevent the prey from escaping as they are backwards facing. The smashers have an incredibly powerful strike, the fastest in the animal kingdom. They use this deadly punch to smash the hard shell of crabs and other crustaceans. The strike is in fact so fast that even regular high speed video doesn’t capture the astonishing details of the killer strike. Scientists were able to measure the punch with cutting edge equipment that could slow the footage down 800 times. What they found amazed them. The strike was measured to have an acceleration of 102,000 m/s from a standing start. That is the same acceleration as a .22 calibre bullet! Because the strike is so fast it generates cavitation bubbles between the claw and the unlucky object they are striking. When the bubble collapses it creates a subsequent force. So in reality, whatever the mantis shrimp is striking gets hit twice. This means that the mantis shrimp doesn’t need to be accurate when striking because if the initial hit misses, the force from the collapsing cavitation bubble can be enough to stun the prey. The high speed camera also detected measurable amounts of sonoluminescence (http://bit.ly/1QXoe6C) which resulted from the collapsing cavitation bubble. This is thought to have no biological significance and is purely a side-effect of the rapid punch.If the mantis shrimp’s punch wasn’t impressive enough they also possess the most elaborate visual systems of any living organism. Their eyes are mounted on mobile stalks which have the ability to move independently to each other and can achieve all possible axes of movement. Each eye contains eight individual eyecup muscles which allows for short, rapid Saccadic (http://bit.ly/1JKGdrW) movements. This allows the mantis shrimp to have a large field of view. Their eyes contain 16 types of colour receptive cones compared to our three. This means that they are capable of recognising colours that we cannot even imagine. Each eye is divided into three sections, giving them trinocular vision and impeccable depth perception. They can perceive both polarised light and multispectral images. There is so much more to be said about the biology of the mantis shrimp eye which you can read up on here… http://bit.ly/1M8p6EC-ANPhoto: http://bit.ly/1HbpGNbFurther reading:http://bit.ly/1HJjDQwhttp://bit.ly/1iWaihOEntertaining but educational: http://bit.ly/1f5Ezbx -- source link
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