ScienceDaily
(Nov. 22, 2012) — A hungry mantis shrimp may be the last thing that a
passing fish sees before it is snatched from the water by the predator. Maya
deVries from the University of California, Berkeley, says 'Spearer mantis
shrimps stay in their sandy burrows and they wait for a fast-moving prey item
to come by, but then they come out of nowhere and grab the prey with their long
skinny appendages.' However, little was know about how these vicious predators
unleash their lightning-fast attacks.
According
to deVries, the spearing shrimp are closely related to smasher mantis shrimps,
which pulverise the shells of crustaceans and molluscs with a single explosive
blow from their mighty claws. Having decided to find out how the crustaceans
unleash their deadly assaults, deVries says, 'We thought that the spearers
would be just as fast -- if not faster -- than the smashers because they have a
smaller time window in which to capture their prey.' deVries and her colleagues
publish their discovery that Lysiosquillina maculata spearer mantis
shrimps power their mighty spears with muscle alone while smaller Alachosquilla vicina
spearer mantis shrimps use a more conventional catapult mechanism in The Journal
of Experimental Biology.
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