Take shrimp, for example. They're delicious. We think nothing of eating a few dozen of them with butter. We call someone a "shrimp" when we want to belittle them. But take a moment to consider the stomatopods.
Better known as mantis shrimp. These sometimes-colourful little fellas have highly specialized eyesight. They can detect 10 times as many colours as a human can, plus ultraviolet and infrared light. Combine this with the shrimp's ability to fluoresce to communicate with each other. Mantis shrimp can also see polarized light, which lets them accurately determine the direction and nature of light. A mantis shrimp underwater can tell which phase the moon is in, which relates to tide patterns and mantis shrimp mating behaviour. Humans have only recently understood these things; mantis shrimp have been using them in practical ways for 400 million years.
But a wide visual spectrum isn't their only superpower. Some varieties of mantis shrimp (referred to as "smashers") have an incredibly fast and powerful jabbing strike. Specialized structures in their claw arms let them ratchet back the limb, store muscle energy, and unleash it like pulling a trigger. That lets them launch a 50 mile-per-hour punch almost instantaneously, with such fast acceleration that the water in front of the claw is depressurized and brought to boil. Pressure change like that is essentially a second powerful punch to the target. Which means that these four-inch shrimp can easily smash through crab shells -- or aquarium glass.
It sure sounds like science fiction material to me. Even scientists have been known to call these creatures "shrimps from Mars". But mantis shrimp are perfectly real, living in our oceans and beating up fish bigger than they are. Just another quiet little marvel crawling around on Earth.
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