Beastfile · Marine Life
Mantis Shrimp
Odontodactylus scyllarus
Also known as Peacock Mantis Shrimp, Stomatopod
The famous eyes are real. The famous conclusion about them is wrong.
Overview
The mantis shrimp is neither a mantis nor a shrimp, and it throws the fastest punch in the animal kingdom: a spring-loaded club that accelerates like a small-calibre bullet, fast enough to boil a bubble of water into existence beside the target and hit it a second time when the bubble collapses. The eyes are the more famous claim and the more misunderstood one. It carries twelve or more photoreceptor types against our three, and it was widely assumed to see colour in unimaginable richness. Testing it in 2014 showed the opposite: it discriminates colours worse than we do. The receptors appear to trade fineness for speed, recognising colour without much processing.
Origin
Shallow tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific reefs, in burrows dug in rubble and sand.
Habitat
OceanNotable Traits
- •A strike that accelerates like a bullet and cavitates the water
- •Twelve or more photoreceptor types, against three in humans
- •Poorer fine colour discrimination than a human, despite that
- •Sees polarised light, including circular polarisation
- •Neither a mantis nor a shrimp; it is a stomatopod
Conservation
Not assessed. Reef degradation is the general pressure, and the brighter species are collected for aquariums, where they are notorious for cracking glass.
