Baby mantis shrimps are able to produce a rapid punch when they are just nine days old and smaller than a grain of rice.
The powerful punch of this species which can make bubbles is its most famed characteristic, and it uses it to hunt and find shelter.
But a new study – which involved gluing baby shrimp to a toothpick and filming them in slow-motion – finds the animals are able to do it from a very early age.
Baby mantis shrimps are able to produce a rapid punch when they are just nine days old and smaller than a grain of rice. The powerful punch of this species which can make bubbles
Footage of the remarkable young shrimp, which have transparent shells, reveals how they produce a punch and how fast their appendage moves.
The team from Duke University show that the limbs have blistering acceleration of 16,500 degrees a second, almost 100 times faster than a Formula One car.
Adult mantis shrimp can smash prey with a blow from their club-like appendage at a top speed of 51mph which is so swift it creates bubbles in the water.
The collapse of these bubbles produces shockwaves which gives the shrimp a two-pronged attack and increases its chances of stunning or killing its prey.
A new study – which involved gluing baby shrimp to a toothpick and filming them in slow-motion – finds the animals are able to do it from a very early age
Footage of the remarkable young shrimp, which have transparent shells, reveals how they produce a punch and how fast their appendage moves. The team from Duke University show that the limbs have blistering acceleration of 16,500 degrees a second, almost 100 times faster than a Formula One car
PhD student Jacob Harrison conducted the research on young shrimp captured as larvae in the ocean around Hawaii and said it took more than a year to perfect his filming method.
‘The larvae can be incredibly tricky to collect,’ he says.
‘It can be incredibly challenging to sift through a bucket teeming with larval crabs, shrimp, fish and worms to find the mantis shrimp.
‘I had to superglue a 4mm sized larva onto a toothpick, place it on a custom-designed rig and orient the individual within view of the camera lens before I could even start collecting data.
‘It took about a year to troubleshoot the right way to set up the camera before we knew that we could capture these videos.’
But the footage they obtained reveals intricate details about the punches and how they are produced.
It shows that a muscle in their arm contracts and pulls the appendage towards the animal’s body and forces the rigid exoskeleton to bend.
This stores energy in the joint like a spring. The shrimp then release an internal latch which holds the bend into place and this releases the pressure and allows the arm to extend back, at extreme pace, to its natural position.
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
