Mantis Shrimp — printable fact sheet
Free to print or save as PDF. Great for classrooms, homeschooling, and young explorers.
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Animal Fact Sheet
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Mantis Shrimp
Odontodactylus scyllarus
The mantis shrimp is not a shrimp, and its fame rests on a limb that behaves like a piece of engineering. "Smashers" store energy in a spring-loaded latch in the forelimb and release it to swing a club at accelerations comparable to a bullet — fast enough that the water in front…
Did you know?
- A mantis shrimp’s punch accelerates as fast as a bullet, briefly causing water to boil through a process called supercavitation.
- Its punch accelerates like a bullet and boils the water in front of it, so a collapsing cavitation bubble strikes the prey a second time. It has twelve to sixteen types of colour receptor to our three — yet, contrary to the famous claim, it discriminates colours worse than humans do. Those receptors appear to buy speed instead, recognising colour without the slow comparison our brains make. Its strike can crack aquarium glass.
What I learned
Draw the mantis shrimp
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