Random Incredible Things You Didn't Know About Mantis Shrimp, Tiny Hulks Of Sea (14 items)

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  (#14) They Are Able to Create Light When They Kill Their Prey

  So, we know these creatures can attack with the speed of a bullet, boil water, and create deadly shock waves with ease, but there's one more strange thing these creatures can do when they attack. Fast striking can sometimes form cavitation bubbles in the water, and these can create small glints of light in a process called sonoluminescence. You might see tiny circular bubbles of light briefly flicker of you were trying to watch one of these attacks. Does this light flash help in hunting? Does it blind the mantis shrimp's prey?

  As it turns out, nope! This flash of light is just a happy side effect of the creature's speed and power, and is a unique ability to the mantis shrimp. It may not have any real practical application, but it's just one more reason the mantis shrimp is a truly awesome creature. 
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  (#9) They Can Vaporize Water Just By Moving

  When a mantis shrimp attacks or decides to move with haste, the consequences on its surroundings can be drastic. For example, the mantis shrimp can move so fast it flash-boils the water around its body or its mandibles. This causes the water to vaporize suddenly, then implode with a sharp bang that can actually be heard by nearby creatures. The bang is accompanied by a shockwave that passes through the water as an added blow against enemies or prey. The heat from the boiling and vaporized water can also harm other animals, which makes a mantis shrimp attack a triple threat: speed, impact, and heat. 

  Some mantis shrimp spear their prey rather than smashing it, and these stabbing mandibles can move just as quickly. They can impale prey so fast that no one ever saw it coming, and can be then used to dismember the prey for eating.
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  (#12) They Are Very Detailed Learners

  You probably wouldn't think of a shrimp, lobster, or any crustacean as being particularly intelligent, but a mantis shrimp would probably disagree with you. Through scientific studies, they have shown to have pretty good memories, and are quite capable of learning and adapting to different situations. Certain species have shown they can signal and understand behavioral signals from other animals besides their own kind, and they are able to learn about unfamiliar species rather quickly. They are able to recognize individual creatures and other mantis shrimp that they repeatedly come across, and can identify others even by smell alone. So, if you were to misguidedly try to keep a mantis shrimp as a pet, it would quickly grow to recognize you.
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  (#5) They Can Break Out Of Most Aquariums

  Given that these little guys can completely destroy a clam shell or kill a fish in a single blow, it makes sense they would not be easily contained. Their mandibles move fast and hard, and are strong enough that they can easily break most glass, even if it's multiple layers thick. When they are kept, they must be stored in shatterproof acrylic and away from any other sea life they could terrorize and kill. Even the Monterey Bay Aquarium had a mantis shrimp break out of its container and make its way to the children's area in 2001. For that reason, you don't see mantis shrimp in many public aquariums, and you see them even less often in private collections. 
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  (#6) They Have The Best Eyesight In The World

  It makes sense the mantis shrimp would have such incredible eyesight, considering how brilliant their eyes look. That secret code they communicate in can only be seen by other mantis shrimp, and that's because they have the best eyes in the animal kingdom.

  While they have trouble differentiating between specific color hues, their eyes are able to see things that ours can't. Each eye has 12 photoreceptors, whereas humans have a mere two. They may be able to see colors we can't even comprehend. What we do know is that they can see and perceive light and shapes far differently and better than us. Scientists have come to believe that mantis shrimp take in all visual information they come across, and that it goes directly into their brains without passing through any sort of processing. This, along with their independently roaming eyes and trinocular vision, make mantis shrimp amazing at reacting to their surroundings in the blink of an eye.
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  (#8) They Were Around Before The Dinosaurs

  The mantis shrimp is hardly a newcomer to the ocean scene. Crustaceans existed among very early sea life, and mantis shrimp branched off from other crustaceans nearly 400 million years ago. That means there were mantis shrimp scuttling around around 170 million years before the very first dinosaurs ever walked the earth. They have since evolved in an isolated evolutionary lineage, which is why they have such an unusual appearance even to this day. It just goes to show they're such an effective hunter and survivor, that they've managed to go this long without getting wiped out.

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