Ultraviiolent Shrimp From Mars

[Gribble]

[url]http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/all-hail-the-ma.html[/url]

Holy shit! I want one of these for a pet.

Not only do these things look like something from a cheesy horror film, they see in a form of light no other living creature does. Plus their response to pretty much anything is to start smashing shit up. And they do that extremely well considering their claw-swinging motion is quicker than anything almost any other creature can do.

Excerpt:
"They're enchantingly violent," he said in an affectionate, almost paternal tone. "They catch other animals by either spearing it through the heart or smashing it to pieces. Unlike most predators that grab prey, these pummel it and destroy it. When they interact with each other over a burrow, they use their armored front appendages and smash each other on the face. Whenever they get into any type of situation, they smash things. You can't pick these up. They're really great animals to have around."

[doppelgaenger]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m6qrMoYtCc&feature=related"]YouTube - Mantis dance[/ame]

[Logos]

That's pretty damn cool. Thanks for posting.

[doppelgaenger]

Check out what the Wikipedia article says about them:

"Mantis shrimp can break through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon [3]."

[Gribble]

This clip is actually a little difficult to watch. Poor crab. The last third shows one of the mantis shrimp in a burrow. Whenever a fish gets to close the monster snatches it so quickly you don't even see a blur. One second there's a fish, the next second there's a severed tail floating in the water.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu6yrC6bjNo"]YouTube - amazing mantis shrimp video[/ame]

[doppelgaenger]

The video is even in German!

Yes, those things are very aggressive, very strong, and very intelligent.

[Illusional]

i think there are also glow in the dark types of fish, but i'm going to have to double check on that.

raverboy

[Junket]

I want to see more colors!

[Lipp]

i think there are also glow in the dark types of fish, but i'm going to have to double check on that.

raverboy

There's a type of sea shells that glow in the dark and scientists being unable to tell how they do it.


And that mantis certainly is cool, makes me miss the aquarium I had a couple of years ago, if I will have some cash lying around I'll aim to set up a new one.

Hmm..Thinking of recreating that one in Spore. An empire of ****in' malevolent shrimp-people that run in and tear everything apart. Oh yes. Oh yes.

Oh, and it also reminded me of watching a whole lot of youtube clips one day on insect fighting 1 on 1 against eachother - scorpions, giant caterpillars, killer bees, spiders, was pretty interesting.

[IndiReloaded]

Oh, now that IS neat.

This just reinforces my belief that "if we can think it, biology has already done it". CP light is familiar to chemists. There is a technique called circular dichroism that is used to determine the chirality of molecules. DM will have learned about this in his 2nd year organic course.

Thanks for posting Grib.

PS - we were discussing this at home & my husband pointed out that, while these shrimps may be the first *animals* to have this type of vision, insects have been known to have this for some time:

[url]http://www.polarization.com/eyes/eyes.html[/url]