ENST: A Shrimp Has an Unbreakable Hammer

This article was published by
Evolution News on Feb. 13, 2025

Sophisticated Energy Shield Found in a Shrimp
by David Coppedge
February 13, 2025

How many showstoppers does it take to stop a show? And how many unique irreducibly complex mechanisms does one organism have to exhibit to falsify Darwinism? “One” should do in answer to both questions. The mantis shrimp has several, enough to make the rubble bounce on an evolutionary fitness landscape.

The mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus) has attracted the attention of scientists for years now, particularly those interested in biomimetics. This brightly colored and googly-eyed creature, looking like a monster from an alien planet, has found solutions that engineers would like to imitate. Its strange-looking, cross-hatched rainbow eyes, for instance, are constantly moving without making the animal dizzy, and it is the only animal known to distinguish circularly polarized light. Its larvae come with flashlights on their eyes. And it has one of the fastest hammers in the living world: a “dactyl club” strong enough to shatter the hard shells of its prey.

How to Pack a Punch

Tropical fish hobbyists know to avoid putting these creatures in their aquariums, because the mantis shrimp’s hammer-like blows can break glass. Emily Reeves wrote about investigations by Stuart Burgess about this hammer that employs a four-bar linkage mechanism. “When the shrimp is ready to punch, it relaxes a muscle, the latch is released, and the accumulated elastic energy delivers 1000 N of force.” A new measurement described below puts that at “~1500 N (i.e., exceeding 1000 times its body weight).”

Therein lies a puzzle: how does the mantis shrimp avoid injuring itself?…..

Click here to continue reading