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.

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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-caliber 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 color in unimaginable richness. Testing it in 2014 showed the opposite: it discriminates colors worse than we do. The receptors appear to trade fineness for speed, recognizing color without much processing.

Close view of a mantis shrimp showing its stalked eyes and raptorial clubs

Origin

Shallow tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific reefs, in burrows dug in rubble and sand.

Habitat

Ocean

Notable Traits

•A strike that accelerates like a bullet and cavitates the water
•Twelve or more photoreceptor types, against three in humans
•Poorer fine color discrimination than a human, despite that
•Sees polarized 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.