Be cautious of those fists! Photo: Silke Baron/Wikimedia Commons.

In April 1998, a formidable creature named Tyson smashed through the quarter-inch-thick glass wall of his tank. Despite being only four inches long, Tyson's daring escape attempt was quite remarkable. However, he was swiftly subdued by attentive attendants and relocated to a more secure facility.

Tyson achieved this feat by utilizing its powerful raptorial appendages, which resemble the front legs of a praying mantis and earned these creatures the name "mantis shrimps." These appendages end in either a brutal hammer or a series of vicious, pointed spines, making them highly effective for catching prey.

When researcher Sheila Patek from UC Berkeley attempted to study these creatures on video, she faced challenges as the high-speed video systems were not fast enough to capture their movements accurately. Fortunately, a BBC crew lent them a super high-speed camera for their series "Animal Camera," enabling Patek to record footage of one of these animals striking in slow motion, over 800 times slower than real-time.

The video revealed that with each punch, the club's edge travels at about 50 mph, more than twice as fast as previously estimated. This makes the strike one of the fastest limb movements in the animal kingdom, especially considering the substantial drag imposed by water.

The mantis shrimp achieves this incredible speed by employing a simple locking ratchet mechanism in its upper forearm, allowing it to store energy and then release it with an impressive acceleration exceeding that of a .22 caliber bullet, delivering over 1,500 Newtons of force.

Furthermore, the shrimp moves its forearm club so rapidly that it lowers the pressure of the water in front of it, causing the water to boil. Upon normalization of the water pressure, bubbles are released, unleashing a tremendous amount of energy – a phenomenon called cavitation.

It's no surprise, then, that being struck by one of these fierce little creatures is extremely painful. Scientists believe that the mantis shrimp's aggressive nature evolved due to the fiercely contested rock crevices they inhabit. The intense competition in these areas has also made these creatures smarter than the average shrimp. They are the only invertebrates capable of recognizing individuals of their species and can remember the outcome of a fight against a rival for up to a month.

Additionally, mantis shrimps possess a unique way of seeing the world. Their compound eyes, resembling those of a bee or fly, consist of 10,000 small photoreceptive units, some of which are arranged in a strip-like setup across their eyes. As a result, they see the world by scanning this strip across their subject, similar to how a barcode reader works in a shop.