Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Mantis shrimp

You may not have missed this, but I certainly did. If it wasn't for a friend at work, I never would have known about this shrimpy dynamo.

First, the cartoon.


Now, a short film:

 


This all came up because a couple of mantis shrimps seem to have found their way into the Monterey Bay Aquarium, just on the other side of the bay on which I live. My friend was highly amused that the best plan for catching this creature, which can punch through aquarium glass and devastate a fish tank, not to mention see a specturum of colors that is about five times what we humans can see, apparently involves using a set of tongs...

4 comments:

  1. I quite like the image of blood-soaked rainbows. I don't like shellfish, however, and not just species that could throw baseballs into space or dismember me with the speed of a bullet.

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  2. Peter, you remind me that I should pass along the update my friend gave me that the mantis shrimp was in fact extricated with the tongs, probably by someone with the courage of ten.

    I actually couldn't watch the second video at the end of the cartoon, but I imagine it shows how lethal this creature is.

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  3. I just got an idea for a traditional mystery in which the killer offs the seafood-loving victim by mixing anaesthetized mantis shrimp into his plate of the conventional kind. It would work only if the victim had monochromatic colorblindness, though.

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  4. Frankly, I wouldn't trust those things even if they were dead.

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