Or nature/biology's tech demo if you don't believe in God.

[WORDS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp

Club arm:

Quote :

"Smashers, on the other hand, possess a much more developed club and a more rudimentary spear (which is nevertheless quite sharp and still used in fights between their own kind); the club is used to bludgeon and smash their meals apart. The "punch" delivered has roughly the acceleration of a .22 caliber bullet.[6][7] The inner aspect of the dactyl (the terminal portion of the appendage) can also possess a sharp edge, with which the animal can cut prey while it swims. Both types strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their raptorial claws at the prey, and are capable of inflicting serious damage on victims significantly greater in size than themselves. In smashers, these two weapons are employed with blinding quickness, with an acceleration of 10,400 g and speeds of 23 m/s from a standing start [8], about the acceleration of a .22 caliber bullet. Because they strike so rapidly, they generate cavitation bubbles between the appendage and the striking surface [8]. The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produces measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of 1,500 newton that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface, which means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follow [9]. Even if the initial strike misses the prey, the resulting shock wave can be enough to kill or stun the prey. The snap can also produce sonoluminescence from the collapsing bubble. This will produce a very small amount of light and high temperatures in the range of several thousand kelvin within the collapsing bubble, although both the light and high temperatures are too weak and short-lived to be detected without advanced scientific equipment. The light emission and temperature increase probably have no biological significance but are rather side-effects of the rapid snapping motion. Pistol shrimp produce this effect in a very similar manner. "

Eyes:
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/03/mantis_shrimps_have_a_unique_way_of_seeing.php

Quote :

"As impressive as their arms are, the eyes of a mantis shrimp are even more incredible. They are mounted on mobile stalks and can move independently of each other. Mantis shrimps can see objects with three different parts of the same eye, giving them 'trinocular vision' so unlike humans who perceive depth best with two eyes, these animals can do it perfectly well with either one of theirs. Their colour vision far exceeds our too. The middle section of each eye, the midband, consists of six parallel strips. The first four are loaded with eight different types of light-sensitive cells (photoreceptors), containing pigments that respond to different wavelengths of light. With these, the mantis shrimp's visible spectrum extends into the infrared and the ultraviolet. They can even use filters to tune each individual photoreceptor according to local light conditions. The fifth and six rows of the midband contain photoreceptors that are specialised for detecting polarised light. Normally, light behaves like a wave that vibrates in every possible direction as it moves along. In comparison, polarised light vibrates in just one direction - think of attaching a piece of string to a wall and shaking it up and down. While we are normally oblivious to it, it's present in the glare that reflects off water and glass and we use polarising filters in sunglasses and cameras to screen it out. Light can also travel in a the shape of a helix, moving as a spiralling beam that spins either clockwise (right-handed) or anti-clockwise (left-handed). This phenomenon is called 'circular polarisation'. Tsyr-Huei Chiou from the University of Maryland found that the mantis shrimp's eye contains the only known cells in the animal kingdom that can detect it. Our technology can do the same, but the mantis shrimps beat us to it by as much as 400 million years. Each of the mantis shrimp's photoreceptors contains seven cells called rhabdoms arranged in a cylinder, and each of these contains thousands of tiny projections called microvilli. In receptors that are sensitive to polarised light, the microvilli are all arranged in one direction, creating a narrow gap that only light vibrating in a certain plane can pass through. Three of the seven rhabdoms are sensitive to one plane of polarised light and the other four are sensitive to a plane that's perpendicular to it. Sitting atop these seven cells is an eighth rhabdom. In the fifth and sixth rows of the midband, the microvilli in this eighth cell are precisely aligned and everywhere else (and indeed in all other crustaceans), they are randomly arranged. It's this key innovation that allows the mantis shrimp to see circular polarised light. The eighth rhabdom creates a slit that's angled at 45 degrees to those created by the seven cells underneath, precisely the precise angle that converts circularly polarised light into its linear version. The light is converted differently depending on whether it spins left or right, and this activates different groups of rhabdoms. When Chiou recorded the electrical activity of the seven underlying rhabdoms, he found that some were only sensitive to right-handed circularly polarised light, while others only responded to the left-handed variety. So in theory, mantis shrimps can not only detect circularly polarised light, they can also tell which direction it's spinning in."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcWxAfl0okE&feature=fvw#t=2m10s

9/1/2009 5:13:17 PM

werds

9/1/2009 5:20:23 PM

i think weve all heard of the mantis shrimp

9/1/2009 5:32:13 PM

thanks for this. you, no, the mantis shrimp, has restored my faith in god.

9/1/2009 5:34:10 PM

^^ Yeah I knew about the arms but didn't know about the eyes til the other day.

They are also smart for crustations and live over 20 years.

9/1/2009 5:38:14 PM

I got a baby one at the shop, prolly 1-2" if anyone wants him.

9/1/2009 5:40:12 PM

I want to see that show Time warp do a segment on them. That would be badass.

9/1/2009 5:50:10 PM

my friend caught one of these one time while fishing

9/1/2009 6:50:09 PM

i am literally a slut for god

9/1/2009 6:52:09 PM

you are certainly a faggot as well.

9/1/2009 6:53:02 PM

if they're so smart, then why do they live in igloos?

9/1/2009 6:56:25 PM

this shrimp brings the heat

9/1/2009 6:57:00 PM

The real question is: How does it taste?

9/1/2009 7:01:44 PM

^ probably like mantis/shrimp

9/1/2009 7:02:57 PM

delish, i'll take a dozen

9/1/2009 7:05:42 PM

mantis tuna > mantis shrimp

9/1/2009 7:08:52 PM

i want god's hot love all over me

9/1/2009 7:32:37 PM

^



?

9/2/2009 6:03:55 PM