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im posting this here because not enough of the freshwater people here look in the saltwater section and need to be educated on what fine animals mantis shrimps are.
hi all just thought id share some photos and a video i got today of my three mantis shrimps.
First is my male Raoulserenea hieroglyphica - spearer:






Next is my small male, 2 inch ish spearer that i think is either a p. cilatia or s. rugosa - tends to run around after food then stick close to rock or under its many burrows so hard to get photos of.





now the gonodactylus chiagra - the most powerfull of all clubbing mantis shrimp. a 3 inch chiagra could easily outstrike a 6 or 7 inch peacock mantis and they hit hard enough!

his arse end! see the size of his "guns" though




You can actually see him striking in one of those photos.
http://s157.photobucket.com/albums/t72/james_meehan/?action=view&current=chiagra_shrimp_vid.flv
This is also a quick vid of the chiagra getting a live ghost shrimp - if you look carefully through my awful filming the glass shrimp gets into a crevice that the mantis cant get into so he bashes some of the rock away and pulled the shrimp through the whole. Here is one of the shrimps that met its demise.

James

Aw, I thought it was going to be a real mantis (i.e., the terrestrial kind).

Them mantis shrimps have crazy eyes.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I like these critters and would have owned some ages ago only I dont really like the idea of sticking my hand in the tank with them....and giving them live food.

Theres just something hypnotic about the way they move.

did you know the cantonese call these pissing shrimp?

I learn something new everyday.

How thick is the glass on your tanks?

just standard thickness...6mm i guess? spearers cant smash glass of course though. Mantis are definatly capable of distinguishing your hand from prey items - they are very clever - look at this mantis fix a rubiks cube - http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/caldwell/rubiksindex.html
Feeding them live food is what a mantis is all about - theyre probably my favourite predator in the world - their eyesight is second to none and anything that can take down a blue ring octopus or a moray eel has my vote anyday.

I wonder who would have enough time to sit there and make a short film about a shrimp "solving" a Rubik's Cube (or how they even came up with that idea).

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

there is actually quite a few "Stomatopologists" studying these animals exclusivley - and of course mantis arent even shrimps - more closely related to the lobster if anything else.
oh and thats david attenboroughs voice on that video.

David Attenborough or not, it's still just a cleverly-edited piece of film that makes it look like a crustacean is actually solving the puzzle.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.