Attack of the Killer Shrimp

Come closer, see how pretty I am. (Photo: Michael Bok)

This is my latest post for TakePart:

One day early this year, on the Connecticut beach where I have walked most days for the past 15 years, I came across an animal I’d never seen before, washed up in the seaweed. At first, a neighbor and I thought it might be an immature lobster. It was about eight inches long, with a greenish-gray segmented carapace, and goggle eyes mounted on stalks. But in place of a lobster’s formidable claws, it seemed to have only a couple of feathery antennae.

So: Lobster-like, but lame.

Lord, were we ever wrong. It was in fact one of the most violent creatures on Earth, “enchantingly violent,” in the words of a biologist who studies them, violent enough to bring to mind the old “Jaws” soundtrack (DUNT-dunt, DUNT-dunt) and the teaser line: “You’ll never go in the water again!”

It was a mantis shrimp, so named because many people think they look like a cross between a preying mantis and a shrimp, though they are actually members of their own crustacean order, the Stomapoda. There are about 400 species of mantis shrimp and they inhabit coastlines worldwide, leading mostly solitary lives, typically burrowing in mud and silt on the sea floor, or hiding out in rocky formations.

But let’s get to the violence.  Click hear to read the rest of the story.