The Mantis Shrimp is one of the most impressive animals you’ll ever come across. There are about 400 different species and they usually grow up to 2 to 7 inches long.
Mantis Shrimp have amazing eyes that are on stalks and can be moved independently to each other in all directions. Humans have three colour receptive cones in our eyes that allow us to see green, blue and red as well as all the colours derived from these three main colours, such as purple. A mantis shrimp has 16 colour receptive cones! Which means they see 13 more primary colours that we don’t even see or have names for and they can see a multitude of colours derived from these primary colours. If you think a rainbow of seven colours looks great to us humans imagine the explosion of colours a Mantis Shrimp would see.
As if super eyes wasn’t enough they also have two appendages on the front of their body with which they can attack at a speed 50 times faster than the blink of our (much inferior) eyes. With a velocity of 10 meters per second a Mantis Shrimp’s attack has the power of a .22 caliber bullet! They can’t be held in glass aquariums since they can break the glass easily and if humans possibly held that much power in our arms we could easily throw a baseball into orbit. This beautiful death machine uses its super powers to hunt crabs and clams, breaking their shells easily. When a mantis shrimp hits its target, the velocity causes water to vaporize and implode with a sharp bang, extremely high heat, and a flash of light. All of which is felt by the prey animal as an additional blow. Talk about rubbing salt on wounds!
In order to punch that hard without breaking their clubs, Mantis Shrimp have a special shock absorbent core that has a molecular structure different than any other animal we know of. This structure keeps small cracks from becoming a full break. This allows the shrimp to punch repeatedly without ever breaking. They may have many micro-cracks but never a break.
Some species of Mantis Shrimp are monogamous and they mate for life. They meet the shrimp of their dreams and they share the same burrow, protect their eggs and help each other with hunting for their entire lives, which is approximately up to 20 years.
Mantis Shrimp are pretty much as close to a real life super hero, as we’re going to get wink emoticon