Mantis Shrimps Vs. The Internets

Dear Internets:

Please work right. I'm looking at you, YouTube and Blogger.

(FYI, right now YouTube seems to be all screwed up, and won't let me watch videos on the site itself. And yes, I have the latest version of Flash Player, thank you. Blogger is giving me messages that, just like the YouTube ones, insist that JavaScript has been turned off and that I can't use Blogger, cookies are disabled, etc.-but if all that's really true, how am I typing this post? Also, Blogger's image stuff isn't working right in at least one of my posts.)

As a result, I decided to post a bunch of videos of mantis shrimp beating the crud out of stuff so that I can watch them.

If you've never heard of mantis shrimp, they are tiny, ferocious scourges of the sea, and aren't actually shrimp or mantids. How nasty are they? They have been nicknamed "thumbsplitters" by divers because they're so good at savaging extremities, and are hard to keep in aquariums because they can break standard aquarium glass. They are also noted for unusually good eyes, apparently the only eyes in the animal kingdom that can perform hyperspectral imaging.

I may add commentary in a few minutes.

WARNING: These videos are not suitable for highly empathic people. Animals were harmed in the making of these films. However, all the harming was perpetrated by animals that actually intended to eat the harmees, so it's okay ethically.



Commentary on the first video: HOLY CHEESE but this one emphasizes how alien and terrifying the mantis shrimp truly is. That, and a really sadistic little monster. Watch the little crab finally manage to defend itself by clamping on to some of the little mass of feelers or whatever they are, the mantis shrimp starts getting agitated, and then all of a sudden WHAM! the mantis shrimp hits that little crab so darned hard his pincher falls off and he shortly thereafter collapses, apparently dead. (Brief attempt at translating the German: Timmy's Minireef... Presents... The World [of] the "Catch-Scary-Crab [mantis shrimp]." "Catch-Scary-Crab" [Fangschreckenkrebse] is a much more appropriate name than "mantis shrimp," don't you think?)



Note that this video has "turn volume up" in its title, apologizing for its terrible quality. (On the one hand, the quality is annoying, especially with the bad camera work and such; on the other hand, it's a lot like watching Cloverfield.) If you can hear that "click" sound, by the way, that's the sound of the little monster beating the crud out of its prey-that's how hard it hits it. Also, this video seems to establish something: Never grab all those little feelers under the mantis shrimp's face. It really ticks him off.



Um, nice music. More commentary on this little video after the next one, because they are both videos of the same mantis shrimp eating the same kind of critter.



You might think, looking at the massive claw of a fiddler crab, that it would have something of an edge in self defense relative to a typical crab. Not so. The primary purpose of its claw is for male territorial fights over females, or some other form of mating ritual; while it has more combat value than, say, the tailfeathers of a peacock, it's got nothing on the smashing or stabbing appendages of a much bigger and more aggressive mantis shrimp.

And now, since I still can't get YouTube to work the way it should, I'm going to jam a whole lot more videos in here so I can watch them.



That thing about the octopus poisoning the mantis shrimp is true-the only video footage I've seen where a mantis shrimp was actually successfully killed by something was when a blue-ringed octopus used its siphon to blow its poison at one.



D'aw, lookit the baby. Is this person actually crazier about mantis shrimp than I am?

(FYI, I don't know what the name means, but I've also seen mantis shrimp named Vladimir and Mr. Mantis, so it's anybody's guess.)



Heh. I didn't mention before that mantis shrimp are master burrowers, but obviously they are.



And obviously, the reason the owner is using tongs to "dance" with the little guy is because the little monster would take his/her fingers. (Someone remarked in the comments on this one "Now try handfeeding it :ppppp.")

Okay, I suppose that's enough of that.