Never bring cocktail sauce to a shrimp fight.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
The Peacock mantis shrimp throws the strongest punch in the animal kingdom. Their club-like claws deliver blows as damaging as twenty-two caliber bullets. Yowch!
It’s been a mystery how the shrimp could withstand their own recoil though. So, Nicolas Alderete and team at Northwestern University examined the structure of the shrimp’s claws.
They found a unique structure resembling plywood that dissipates vibrations. By using ultrafast lasers, the researchers were also able to probe the acoustic properties of the claws. And? The claw’s shell selectively filters out certain vibrations, protecting the shrimp from impact.
So, be careful who you call shrimpy!
Reference: Alderete, N. A., Sandeep, S., Raetz, S., Asgari, M., Abi Ghanem, M., & Espinosa, H. D. (2025). Does the mantis shrimp pack a phononic shield? Science, 387(6734), 659–666. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq7100