Rolling with the punches: How mantis shrimp defend against high-speed strikes

The mantis shrimp episode of Octonauts is still one of my favorite all-time episodes of kids TV.

That was a great episode. They do a great job crafting stories around the featured creature. And now I have “creature report” playing in my head.

You might like this - ZeFrank's video on mantis shrimp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FEj9U-CJM

"accelerating on par with a 22-caliber bullet"

I suspect they don't literally mean to compare acceleration rates?

Googling provides all sorts of additional likely misreporting: same speed, same power, same energy.

Well good old Wikipedia gave a pretty straightforward answer of: an acceleration of 10,400 g (102,000 m/s2 or 335,000 ft/s2) and speeds of 23 m/s (83 km/h; 51 mph) from a standing start.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp#Claws

It’s an interesting article and I recommend reading it (it’s very short). However, it was disappointing to not have the slow motion video discussed in the article included. I followed a few links and found it:

Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/9/jeb247063/...

Video: https://movie.biologists.com/video/10.1242/jeb.247063/video-...