Story of a Mantis shrimp

What do rainbows, Northern Lights, and my fish, Streaky, have in common? 

Well, for starters, they are all awesome. But actually, I can see all of them because they reflect light into my eye. My eye and yours too, contains millions of light sensitive cells called rods and cones. Rods enable us to see light and motion and cones allow us to see color. Humans have three types of cones: red, green, and blue. The mixture of red, green, and blue allows us to see all of the beautiful colors in the world. Remember my goldfish? He has four cones: red, green, blue, and ultraviolet. The butterfly can see five colors: red, green, blue, and two others that we don’t even have names for. Imagine all of the possible color variations with 5 cones! But, the butterfly isn’t the king of the colors. 

A small animal, a bit bigger than your hand, holds that title. You can find this brightly colored sea creature hiding in rock tunnels or burrowing intricate passageways in the sea bed. Its name is the mantis shrimp.  The mantis shrimp can see not one, not two, but sixteen different colors! Imagine a color that you can’t even imagine. Now do that thirteen more times. That is the world the mantis shrimp lives in. Hold on, all this imagining has made me quite hungry; I’m going to get something to eat.

Ok. I’m back now. When I get hungry, I go to the refrigerator to get something to eat. If I’m feeling adventurous, I make a sandwich. The mantis shrimp doesn’t have that luxury. Like most animals, it has to hunt for its food. But the mantis shrimp doesn’t hunt like most animals. It has two raptor-like arms that are fitted with a club on the end, much like a boxer’s gloves. This shrimp definitely packs a punch. 

When a mantis shrimp strikes, it can hit its prey with 1,500Newtons of force. That is as powerful as the impact from a grand piano dropping from a second story building. The surrounding water bubbles up from the pressure difference. This is calledsupercavitation. These bubbles implode and send out a undersea shockwave that can kill prey even if the shrimp misses with the punch. The water heats up to a higher temperature than theinside of a blast furnace. The force from the imploding bubbles is so strong that it emits little flashes of light in an effect known as sonoluminescence. A punch from a mantis shrimp is powerful enough to break glass. 

If you were to move your hand that fast to punch something, all the bones inside would most definitely crack. But, the mantis shrimp’s arms are so resilient that scientists are studying them for applications in advanced body armor.

The mantis shrimp is an animal of contradictions. It can see the world much more vividly than we can, yet it embraces the darkness. The mantis shrimp is my favorite animal, but I would never dream of putting it in my aquarium.

--- Akhil Surapaneni