Mashing Mantis Shrimp

The mantis shrimp is a highly developed crustacean with some amazing characteristics.  Coming equipped with the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom they see with 4 times the light spectrum of humans and a lightning quick knockout punch it uses to stun its pray it is a very capable hunter, killing fish and pray larger than itself.  The mantis shrimp is not a shrimp at all but its own species of crustaceans, named because it has a similar appearance to a praying mantis.  There are two types of mantis shrimp and hundreds of subspecies of each category living in cold to tropical seas around the world.  The difference comes in the type of clubs they possess to kill their prey, one type has a sharp needle like expenditure that punctures the prey’s flesh and leaves them in the mantis shrimps jaws, the other are thick, hard clubs that stun the victim giving the mantis time to grab the unconscious fish or shrimp swimming by.  The power-punch the mantis packs is similar to that of a .22 caliber bullet and it is known by some divers as the “thumb-splitter” because sometimes they will attack a human hand when they reach near the crevices they live in, doing damage even through gloves and wet suits.  The mantis shrimp is one of the most intelligent animals under the ocean and definitely pound for pound the most ferocious predators. 

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/mantis-shrimp-smash.html