Tristan's Blog

The California mantis shrimp is so cool! It eats mussels by using its powerful claws as a hammer which is very smart. It’s 10 inches long and pink like most shrimp but it has blue and red butterfly wings as a tail and below its head. This helps it camouflage and look scary to predators when it stands up. When it stands up it also looks like a praying mantis because of its big eyes and claws.

It’s the most powerful animal for its size in the world! A mantis shrimp’s claws are as fast as a 22 caliber bullet. Isn’t that awesome? If I ever find one I don’t think I’d pick it up just in case it uses its claws on me.

Did you know it isn’t really a shrimp? It got its name because it just looks like a shrimp. The funniest thing about it is it gets stranded during low tide. Its back legs don’t work well on dry land because they’re meant for water. So it curls up and rolls forward like a wheel into the closest tidal pool. That is hilarious!

What is the coolest thing you’ve learned about the mantis shrimp?

image: Mantis Shrimp by prilfish released under a CC Attribution license