Adult mantis shrimp pack an explosive punch that can split water, but no crustacean emerges fully formed. Minute larvae can undergo six or seven transformations before emerging as fully developed adults and limbs and maneuvers develop over time. So, when do mantis shrimp larvae acquire the ability to pulverize their dinner and how powerful are the punches that these mini crustaceans pack? “We knew that larval mantis shrimp have these beautiful appendages; Megan Porter and Eve Robinson at the University of Hawaii had captured normal videos of a couple of strikes a few years ago,” says Jacob Harrison from Duke University, USA. So, he packed up Sheila Patek’s high-speed camera and high-resolution lens and traveled to Hawai’i to investigate the developing crustacean’s maneuvers. The team publish their discovery that minute mantis shrimp larvae can begin unleashing their ballistic blows as little as 9-days after hatching in Journal of Experimental Biology, and show that the limbs reach blistering accelerations of 22 million deg/s2, moving at ~0.385mm/s, which is 5-10 times faster than the larval snacks they dine on
Click here for original story, Mantis shrimp larvae punch just like mom and dad
Source: Phys.org