“Instagram Baddies” are known for always looking their best while personifying a “tough and sassy” attitude. This beautiful creature featured above is Odontodactylus Scyllarus or the Peacock Mantis shrimp. Not only is the Mantis shrimp beautiful to look at, they are the toughest crustaceans in the ocean.

If you can’t tell already, Mantis shrimp are fascinating animals that arose over 193 million years ago.

There are two categories of mantis shrimp: spearing and smashing. Each category spends most of their time in their burrows where they eat prey, mate, and keep their eggs safe. Similar to a moody teenager, mantis shrimp like to spend all their time in their room. Spearing species choose their burrows to be in soft sediments, but the smashing species choose to make their burrows in rocks, boulders, mussel/cobble scars, rocky pools , or coral cavities. When the Mantis Shrimp or Stomatopod grows, they have to find a new burrow to fit their new size.  The spearing species of mantis shrimp are able to make their burrow bigger if it is made of mud.

The lifespan of the mantis shrimp can be as high as 20 years. As the crustacean hatches from its egg, it begins its life as a plankton. They develop into a larval stage eventually turning into an adult which is marked by the growth of their appendages. The larvae can act as predators, and they use their raptorial appendages to assist in hatching and striking. The larvae will feed on other mantis shrimp larvae for a food source. The male mantis shrimp is more colorful than the female so it can attract the female for mating. Mantis shrimp are generally monogamous ( have one mating partner) throughout its life, but there are some cases when the crustacean will have multiple mates. Once a male attracts a female, they will release their sperm for the female to collect and hold. The female will hold the sperm anywhere from 2 hours to weeks! When she is ready to use the sperm, she will fertilize her eggs and hide them in her burrow until they hatch.

Mantis shrimp are not only beautiful, but also powerful. A smashing mantis shrimp can punch at the same velocity as a .22 caliber rifle. They accomplish this through their spring loaded fists. The punches are so fast that they cause cavitation bubbles. These punches allow them to punch cracks into aquarium glass. Their clubs don’t break because they are made of elastic polysaccharide chitin.

Mantis shrimp also have one of the most complex eyes. They have the ability to see cancer cells, and they have 12-16 different photoreceptors, 3 times that of humans. Even with all of these different color photoreceptors, it is believed that they are worse at differentiating different colors. This is because their eyes function on a higher level. Their eyes function more like a satellite, allowing them to take in all their visual information without them having to process it, so they are able to react to their environment instantly.