By Mac Bellingham
The mantis shrimp is one of the most powerful animals, and it’s only seven inches tall! It looks impressive due to its bright colouring, but you will probably underestimate how insanely overpowered this creature is, as it is a relatively small shrimp. However, it has so many cool features and adaptations, that makes it one of my personal favourite animals, as well as being able to create interesting possibilities for new technology.
The mantis shrimp’s most famous and impressive feature is its powerful and fast punch. Only some types of mantis shrimp have the extreme punch, but the others have an insanely fast reaction speed to spear their prey. Their claws have specifically built flexor and extensor muscles that let them latch onto prey so fast. The extensor muscles extend, triggering a latch with the flexor muscles, so when the mantis shrimp sees prey, the latch unlocks, whipping the claw out extremely fast.
The “Smasher” mantis shrimps, such as the purple spot mantis shrimps, punch their prey, often snails and other creatures with exoskeletons, rather than use the element of surprise to skewer small fish. These sorts of mantis shrimp have punching speeds faster than the speed of a 0.22 caliber bullet, reaching speeds of 150,000m/s2. This is even more insane considering it lives underwater, which is denser than air, making it even more difficult to reach this speed! But these punches aren’t just powerful, they are so fast that they create a small bubble of air around the site of the punch, where the temperatures in that bubble rival the temperature of the surface of the sun! Although scientists are unsure whether the bubble is simply a side effect of the punch, or if they are deliberate, one thing’s for certain, you do not want to be on the wrong side of a mantis shrimp. This powerful punch comes from a latching mechanism, similar to a bow and arrow, with the speed coming from the time building up the energy. Luckily for us, humans are not typically attacked by mantis shrimp, because of our large size, so as long as you stay out of their way, you won’t lose a finger!
If that wasn’t amazing enough, the mantis shrimp also has one of the most remarkable eyes in the animal kingdom. They have 12-16 photo-receptors in their eyes, and for context, humans only have three. Having so many photo-receptors allows them to see colours beyond what we can, including the ultra-violet spectrum. Imagine all the colours they would be able to see underwater! Scientists hypothesise that the reason for having such advanced vision is to more effectively be able to distinguish predator from prey, and improve their reaction time for their punches.
The mantis shrimp’s astonishing abilities also have many applications for new technology, the most notable being their visual system leading to possible cancer detecting cameras. Because of the range of colours and light the mantis shrimp can see, they can see polarised light which, when replicated in a lab with silicon materials, can create a state-of-the-art camera, which has numerous applications, including detecting cancer, all for the cost of 100 dollars USD. The mantis shrimp isn’t just a great predator, it can also help improve our own livelihoods as well.