Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
The Feisty Shrimp That Kills With Bullets Made of Bubbles
This is what it looks like when a pistol shrimp gets stung by a bee. I jest, of course. Everyone knows that bees can't swim. That giant claw is perfectly natural: The shrimp uses it to snap so hard that it briefly heats the water to 8,000 degrees
THE GREATEST, SMOOTHEST gunslinger of all time—and I say it knowing full well I’m going to get emails for this opinion—is Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, aka Blondie, of Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti westerns. I mean, at a public hanging the guy sat back and sniped the rope to free the accused, then blasted off the hats of the men in attendance. Because let’s be real: Wearing a hat to an execution is bad form.
But the greatest real-life gunslingers have to be the pistol shrimp, aka the snapping shrimp, hundreds of species with an enormous claw they use to fire bullets of bubbles at foes, knocking them out cold or even killing them. The resulting sound is an incredible 210 decibels, far louder than an actual gunshot, which averages around 150.
Pound for pound, pistol shrimp are some of the most powerful, most raucous critters on Earth. Yet at the same time they are quite vulnerable, allying with all manner of creatures and even forming bizarre societies to protect themselves from the many menaces of the ocean bottom.
The pistol shrimp has two claws, a small pincer and an enormous snapper. The snapper, which can grow to up to half the length of the shrimp’s body, does not have two symmetrical halves like the pincer. Instead, half of it is immobile, called a propus, which has a socket. The other half, called a dactyl, is the mobile part. It has a plunger that fits into this socket. The shrimp opens the dactyl by co-contracting both an opener and closer muscle. This builds tension until another closer muscle contracts, setting the whole thing off with incredible force.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
Comments
Post a Comment