A Fangirl's Account of Mantis Shrimp

Warning: This article is going to be biased due to my unending admiration for mantis shrimp. Read with discretion. 

Mantis shrimp are the best animals. 

Don’t believe me? Well, allow me to explain them first. Mantis shrimp have their very own order, Stomatopods, in the animal kingdom. There are 450 subspecies, with each having undergone hundreds of millions of years of evolution to occupy a specific niche in their environment. Occupying the Earth long before the first dinosaur, Mantis shrimp have accumulated many impressive feats. 

First off, they are either the best boxers or the best fencers in the world, depending on the variety. Mantis shrimp are separated into two categories: Spearers and Smashers. The Spearers, as indicated by their name, use spiny claws to impale prey with lightning speed and accuracy that would make a sharpshooter jealous. In less time than it takes a human to blink, a mantis shrimp can stab a fish up to six inches away. 

But the Smashers are far more impressive. They punch their prey with mineral hardened clubs at 335,000 feet per second, generating about as much force as a .22 caliber bullet. The strike is so fast that it generates cavitation bubbles and a brief flash of light. The collapsing cavitation bubbles release extraordinary amounts of heat: around 7,000° K. For reference, the SURFACE OF THE SUN is 5,700° K. This means that even if they miss, they immediately boil their prey alive with the aftershock of the strike. And here I was thinking that “shrimpy” meant weak…

Second, the mantis shrimp have some of the best eyes in the world. Humans have three color receptors- red, blue, and green- and can see any color combinations of those three. Mantis shrimp on the other hand have twelve color receptors- allowing them to see most of the light spectrum. When they look out into the ocean, they don’t see a sheet of blue, but a mirage of polarized, ultraviolet, and infrared rays. This vision grants many nifty abilities, such as the power to see cancerous cells. Without getting too wrapped up in details, mantis shrimp can detect circularly polarized light which reflects differently off of cancerous cells than it does healthy cells. Now, I don’t think they’ll be doing much cancer-spotting in their day-to-day lives, but it’s still a neat trick. 

Third, they’re just cute in a very alien sort of way. Seriously, why do we put effort into designing sci-fi creatures when they already exist on the ocean floor? The peacock mantis shrimp are particularly austere; their bodies a mural of swirling greens, reds, blues, and purples (which naturally raises the question of how mantis shrimp must look to other mantis shrimp). They look downright magical, particularly against the backdrop of a gray gravel floor. 

Finally, my favorite thing about the mantis shrimp is how little we know about them. Why do they have 16 color receptors? What are they used for? How do their claws not shatter on impact? What does the world look like to them? How did they evolve so differently from every other creature on this planet? We don’t know. As technology improves, it’s easy to buy into the myth that there are no more mysteries in the world, but that simply isn’t true. A creature with the power to strike Suns into the water and see cancer lives right in our backyards, and we still know next to nothing about them. So go into the world with the knowledge that there is always something cool hiding under a rock nearby.