What is the king of the sea? The dangerous Great White Shark? The majestic and beautiful Blue Whale? Well, I believe it’s the Mantis Shrimp. This being has two distinct qualities/abilities that separate it from other aquatic killers. Those traits are it’s eyes and so called “claws”, but I decided to ease you into those characteristics by sticking to the simple qualities at first, it’s habitat and diet.
The Mantis Shrimp has a diet of all seafood. It generally eats clams, crabs, but if there isn’t any other crustaceans around, it will eat other Mantis Shrimp. The Mantis Shrimp can be found in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It will settle for subtropical parts of these oceans as well. As far as reproduction goes, not much…show more content… Mantis Shrimp’s eyes are wonders of nature. They can see in both infrared and ultraviolet using it’s 6 focal points. Like the Predator from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It can faze in between both vision wavelengths depending on the situation at hand. When hunting it usually uses infrared so it can see it’s prey from afar, and so it can’t hide. “MAAs (or mycosporine-like amino acids, in full). There are four, possibly five, of these, which block slightly different wavelengths of UV. Combine these filters with the two underlying opsins, and you get six different classes of UV receptor.” (National Geographic Article: Nature's Most Amazing Eyes Just Got A Bit Weirder). The MAAs also act as a permanent sunscreen to protect from the sunlight, but just to be safe the Mantis Shrimp is also nocturnal.
The Mantis Shrimp also has 2 bulb shaped appendages attached to it’s abdomen. These appendages are used to punch it’s enemy/prey or to break things it’s enemies are hiding behind. Each punch has the force of a .22 caliber bullet, and the speed of 23 meters per second. To give you an idea of how fast that is, the average human throws a punch at the speed of about 10-11 meters per second. This aquatic killer is not a big threat towards humans though, but that doesn’t mean if you see a Mantis Shrimp in the water you should go over and touch it. It can still hurt as much as a bullet if it hits
