A Load of Learnin' About Mantis Shrimps by James Fatherree

I read a little about mantis shrimps while taking invertebrate zoology and had even seen a couple of T.V. shows that featured them years ago. I thought they were neat little beasties to say the least, but admittedly I never paid too much attention to them in the subsequent years. When perusing general literature on the subject, what I invariably picked out was that they hide a lot, they can be very aggressive, they cannot be trusted with other "meaty" invertebrates or small fishes, and they can even be dangerous. In addition, I very rarely saw them in stores, and never knew anyone personally that had one (that they wanted), either. So, as much as I like cool critters, I never felt the need to buy one and bring home yet another pet that might need it's own tank.

But, as I was shopping in Tampa one day, looking for something interesting to put in a 20 gallon tank that I'd recently set up, I happened to come across a tiny, bright green mantis called Neogonodactylus wennerae. The aquarium didn't have too much in it really, so with a rather spontaneous change of heart, I figured I'd go ahead and give one a try. It was only a few dollars and a small local species, so I figured if I didn't like it I'd just let it go.

The story of how things went after that will come in a minute. But first, some information about mantis shrimps in general. Some information on how to care for them - or how to get rid of them follows, as well.

General Biology Stuff:

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 species of mantis shrimps, being a diverse bunch that range in adult size from less than an inch up to almost 16 inches, with the majority being between 1.5 to 4 inches. They are found worldwide in temperate and tropical seas, and all are placed in the Order Stomatopoda, which is part of the Phylum Arthropoda. While they're called mantis shrimps, the odd thing is that they aren't really shrimps by definition, or mantises either for that matter, and they are properly called stomatopods. But, they certainly look enough like a cross between the two for the common name to stick whether it's "correct" or not.

They aren't "true" shrimps for a number of reasons, with the most obvious being their possession of specialized prey-capturing/killing limbs known as raptorial appendages. These raptorial appendages are found where we would normally expect to see some sort of pincers on a true shrimp or crab, and are quite multi-purpose, being used for predation and self-defense, and often for modifying their environment when necessary, as well. There are also two discrete and different forms for these appendages, leading to a division of all mantises into two large groups. Depending on which form they brandish, mantises will use them primarily to break things, or to stab things. Thus, they are called either "smashers" or "spearers," respectively.

There are some general behavioral differences between the two groups, too. Smashers tend to live in holes/tubes in rocks, or rock rubble, but spend time roaming about stalking prey. They tend to feed on crabs, snails, and other shelled victims, and will use their "weapons" to pound open their victims' shells, eating the contents afterwards. Conversely, spearers tend to build and wait in burrows on soft sediment bottoms, and feed on fishes and other soft-bodied prey using an ambush technique. They stay in place and wait for a victim to inadvertently come into their range, quickly reaching out to nail them. One type of mantis may eat the other's preferred food, though, if the need and opportunity arise.

Other than the fancy weaponry, they also consistently have a shortened body and an elongated, very flexible tail, which allows them to turn around quickly and easily in tight spaces and in burrows. The tail and the specialized oar-like swimming appendages on its underside also allow the shrimps to scoot/swim surprisingly fast when on the hunt, or when they get spooked. They also have some serious vision equipment, having extraordinarily advanced eyes on short, but highly mobile stalks. This allows them see extremely well and look in different directions simultaneously, too. And, they provide exceptionally accurate depth perception (target acquisition), making their lightning-quick weapons that much more effective and deadly.

The Weapons in Particular:

Check out the pictures. Taking a close look at one of the raptorial appendages will reveal that it is comprised of three main segments, which can be folded up very tightly when not in use. As you can see, the last segment of the weapon also looks quite different depending on whether it belongs to a smasher or spearer.

The smasher's has a very sharp, single point at the end of the last segment, which can be used like a knife to stab or slash at soft tissues. However, it's the base of the segment that has a thickened heel that is used for bashing things. When using this heel, the last segment is kept in the folded position (as shown), with the pointed tip tucked in. Thus, they easily can handle soft and hard targets as needed.

These are shots of a N. wennerae's smashing appendage, with the last segment folded in place for bashing. Note the sharp point, but lack of spines, and the flattened heel at its base. It's hard to believe something so small can be so effective.
 

Conversely, the spearer's weapon can have something like 3 to 17 upward/outward projecting spines on the last segment, but no heel at it's base. The spines are used to impale victims in a Freddy Krueger fashion, and are then flipped back towards the second segment to hold the prey in place for eating. They work essentially the same way an insect Preying mantis' weapons do, but in the opposite direction. They fold up instead of down.

Absolutely beautiful weapons. Look at this thing! These are two shots of O. oratoria's spearing appendage. One in the "tucked" position and the other partially extended.
 

I read the same thing in three or four different places (although it was never specifically referenced), "... they can strike at 10 meters per second...one of the fastest movements in nature..." But, at first glance that didn't sound very fast to me, really. So, I was a bit confused for a minute. After all, I can run almost that fast (well, maybe 15 years ago I almost could). Anyway, that's "only" 22.4 m.p.h. Time to use the calculator a little more to put things into better perspective.

A little finger poking revealed that if you're a small mantis, and only reaching out about one inch to strike your meal - your weapon can make contact in something like 0.0025 seconds. The victim is alive at t = 0" and dead at t + 0.0025". Twenty-five ten-thousandths of a second (1/400th) in between. Yeah, I reckon that is pretty quick. A lot quicker than I can move my fingers anyway (foreshadowing).

With this in mind, while the weapons aren't that big relative to the size of the bearer, this speed is why they end up being deadly in the way a small, but high-velocity bullet can be. Speaking of bullets, on one show I saw about mantises, some guys were getting a big smasher to smack a rubber bulb on the end of a plastic tube, and then measuring the air pressure created in the tube. The resulting pressures were actually up there with the force produced by the hit of a small bullet. Makes me have bad dreams about stepping too close to one and having my ankle shattered...

If they can hit this hard, it should be no surprise that such an individual can shatter glass panes and knock the side or bottom out of an aquarium. We're not talking about a one-footer either, as a enraged smasher half that size can likely bust out of anything not made of kryptonite if it chooses. Fortunately, there are plenty of attractive species out there that stay relatively small and shouldn't present such problems.

A Few Other Tidbits (Random Stuff I Found Interesting):

- Many mantises will live at least four or five years, some several times longer.

- They are well-known for having exceptional vision. Their eyes contain 16 different types of photoreceptors, 12 of which are for color analysis, compared to three in human eyes. This allows them to distinguish up to 100,000 colors, compared to around 10,000 or less, seen by humans beings (I'm partially color-blind).

- Their eyes also posses various color filters and polarization receptors, allowing them to see polarized light and four colors of UV light.

- They may be the only invertebrates that can identify individuals of the same species by their "body odor." In other words, they smell and remember well enough that they know Bob from Bill from Jane, not just that they are other mantises.

- They get into ritualized fights (like rams, etc.) in which they trade licks upon the terminal flaps of each other's flexible tail section. They can go at it, decide a victor, and not really get hurt in the process, although, on occasion, they will fight to the death.

- Many only get together for one-night stands, but there are others that mate for life as a monogamous pair, depending on the species.

- Eggs may be laid and kept in a burrow, or they may be carried under the female's tail. Regardless, once they hatch they may spend three months as plankton.

- Some may change color with changes in lighting and their surroundings. For example, some specimens from deep waters may be dark blue or reddish, but can slowly change to bright green in a well-lit aquarium that houses macroalgae like caulerpa. This occurs when they molt.

There's much, much more, but this is going to run long as is...

My Own Experience with One:

My 20 gallon contained a few good pieces of aquacultured live rock/coral rock, a sand bed, and two fishes. There were also a few snails and hermit crabs, too. I removed the three small Astraea snails, but left three much larger Turbo snails in, and left the hermits in, as well. With the exception of a relatively large spotted hermit (Dardanus megistos), the rest were small ones that I collected myself, and I considered the small ones "expendable" and the big one "tough enough." The mantis was a very little one, being in the neighborhood of only an inch long.

In it went, and hid. But, soon after, the search for a home started and it found a hole of some sort near the back side a large piece of live rock. Then it started to jackhammer the inside of the rock and I could hear intermittent rapid popping sounds for a couple of days, or so. A hole later appeared on the front side of the rock, just above the level of the sand substrate. It was a good miner. Upon inspection with a flashlight, I found that the mantis had enlarged the diameter of hole, as well, making it big enough to turn around in. Afterwards, attention was turned to the opposite side of the tank and a burrow of sorts was excavated under a couple of other pieces of rock. All I would see was a flurry of sand flying out from under them. Initially, it stayed in one of the two locations about 99% of the time the lights were on, primarily in the rock.

click here for full size picture
At first this was about all I got to see: eyes looking back at me from a hole.

Within a week all of the little hermits were gone. No surprise. I even saw the attack once, as I happened to eye a small object flying up from the bottom immediately after hearing a distinctive tick, tick sound. Another smack or two, and the hermit's shell was breached and the eating began. Cool! Besides the small hermits, the only other things to disappear were all of the barnacles on the live rock. Their little forts were no match for my little smasher, and they were all dispatched before long.

I collected more hermits, but I also started adding dried shrimp pellets, too. It liked them. It also fancied flake food and brine shrimp, as well. Easy to feed, albeit a very shy diner. I was also pleased that as best as I could tell, the mantis had made no attempts to eat the turbos or the big hermit. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the mantis actually ignored them, even when they were very close together.

It was such an interesting little critter to watch, as it would sit in it's hole, looking all around, slowly creeping outwards every once in a while to look around. It seemed to eventually realize that I wasn't a threat, and accordingly began to spend more and more time outside the hideouts, walking about. It began to give me the distinct impression that it was very curious, not just out looking for a meal, and enjoyed watching me as much as I liked watching it.

click here for full size picture
"You lookin' at me?"
Here's my mantis, Neogonodactylus wennerae, striking a pose, with head and weapons up and
ready for action. Pretty fierce for something that reaches a maximum size of less than 2.5 inches.

Over the next several months I added more corals, more fish, and even a skunk cleaner shrimp, with no problems. The mantis seemed to be content with the fish foods and occasional little hermits. But, then things went wrong. For reasons unknown, the mantis decided to have a showdown with the big hermit, and I happened to be there to see it. It had almost doubled in size by this time, to around two inches in length, and possibly decided it was now large enough to handle the big guy.

The mantis darted out of its burrow and smacked the hermit's shell a couple of times. It was a pretty heavy shell though and nothing happened. The hermit just jerked in and sat there. The mantis retreated to its lair and waited for the hermit to come back out, then tried the same again. Still no damage to the hermit. So, at this point I thought maybe the mantis was just harassing the hermit and might get tired of it and quit. Nope. The third try was a charm, as the mantis caught the hermit before it could retreat, went for the head, and whacked off one of its stalked eyes. Time to break it up and save my hermit! I banged on the front pane of the tank, the mantis split, and I yanked the hermit out just in time.

click here for full size picture
My poor hermie lost an eye in a fraction of a second. I imagine if I hadn't been
there to break things up, it would have lost a lot more, though. FYI, he's over
three years old now and doing fine, even with one eye.

I thought about what to do for a bit and decided to pull the mantis out and move it elsewhere. At the time I was also playing around with a non-coral aquarium with lots of rocks and sand, but only a few other fishes and inverts that I had collected, and figured I'd transfer the beastie over. So, I sat down and made a trap.

The mantis liked brine shrimp a lot, and would chase them around in the aquarium's currents, giving me a good idea of what to do. It was really pretty simple. I put some brine in a glass and covered the top with some clear plastic-wrap, only leaving a small gap at one side open. I positioned it near the mantis' hole and about one inch from the side of the tank, then moved my magnetic cleaning magnet (that's about one inch thick) in place just above the gap I'd left in the plastic. Only slightly more ingenious than a chimp using a stick to eat termites.

As smart as it seemed, I caught it with a simple, expedient trap in only a few seconds. Twice. You can see how the cleaning magnet came into play if you look at the right corner of the picture.

It literally took only a few seconds for the mantis to get a whiff of the food and come shooting out from it's den. It located the gap quickly and went in for the grub, and I just as quickly came down with the magnet to block the opening. Gotcha! I figured it would be a bad idea to leave it in a glass container for too long though, and had pulled out a plastic breeder/holding box before inserting the trap. So, I grabbed the glass, poured the mantis into the breeder box, added a piece of coral skeleton, and sank it in the aquarium. Success! Or so I thought.

It didn't look too concerned about being in the box at this point, but that changed momentarily. When it decided to go back home, the little devil knocked the corner out in about 10 seconds and split.

I carried the glass to the kitchen, and on the way back to the tank I heard the mantis pounding the side of the box. Then, before I could even get my hand in to grab the box, the mantis shot out of the corner and into the rockwork. The little monster had knocked a hole in the container just big enough to squeeze out. Got to try the trap again.

I was pretty irritated at this point, and guessed that the mantis was too, so I waited a while before repeating the same procedure. I was a bit wary of using glass this time, though, after seeing the hole in my box and used a clear plastic cup instead. I was actually kind of surprised that it worked just as well the second time, almost expecting it not to, and quickly pulled out the cup and poured the mantis directly into the other aquarium. Sorry, but no acclimation.

The story doesn't end here though, as the two pistol shrimp living in the tank didn't like the new company at all. I'd forgotten about them in my haste. Pistols are another odd sort of shrimp that has funny appendages, too. Theirs are used to seriously stun other critters though, as they're specially designed to make an extraordinarily loud popping sound when closed quickly (think - pistol). Loud enough to be heard throughout the house, and loud enough to ring the bell of anything that bugs them, which the mantis apparently did. Also loud enough to startle the absolute hell out of you if you happen to have your arm in the tank doing maintenance.

Needless to say, the fireworks started that night. Pop, pop, pop... Pop, pop, pop... Pop, pop... like a gunfight going on. But, after an hour or so the noise stopped and I figured they were done with each other. I assumed the mantis had been the victor, but I was wrong again.

I got up the next morning, did some tequila shots (just kidding), and looked in to see the mantis laid out, in the open, with legs up, and sitting perfectly still. Dead. Hmmmm, all that effort and it died on me (or I killed it depending on how you look at it).

No it didn't (I didn't). I reached in to pull out the lifeless body, only to realize that it wasn't so lifeless. It popped a slit in my finger in less than 25/10,000ths of a second and the blood was running fast before I could get my hand out of the water. So, they really are thumb splitters, or at least index finger splitters. Imagine that! There are times when I feel like I'm real smart. There are times when I know that I am not...

OUCH!!!!

Luckily, I'd had a tetanus shot lately, and didn't feel the need to make a hospital trip out of this. I cleaned it up and bandaged it, and left the mantis where it was. It never moved from where it came to rest though, and after waiting for a while I removed it with some chopsticks. Yes, it was really dead this time. I can't say if it was the pistol shrimp (hard to believe) or the stress of the rapid transfer, or both, that killed the mantis, but it was dead nonetheless. I doubt it died of guilt.

I took a couple of pictures of the pretty green corpse, and then pulled it apart for fish food, some of which the big hermit ate.

The stationary look. Too bad it's only possible here because it's dead as a doornail.

On the Subject of Mantises and Food:

I moved to Japan a while back and I now live near a small fishing marina/port. So, sometimes I enjoy going down to the docks and picking through the catch that comes in on the trawlers. The Japanese tend to keep essentially everything that comes up in the nets that is animate, so I often get to fool around with an interesting critter or two. Fishes, shrimps, crabs, squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, sea cucumbers and such abound - all kept in live wells and often still gasping when they hit the ice at the local grocery stores.

Anyway, the first time I decided to take a look, I was surprised to find that a fisherman had a small lot of mantis shrimp in one of his wells. As it turns out, they're called "shako" here, and are actually quite popular. I offered to buy some, but the fisherman gave me a bag and seemed to be quite tickled at my excitement over some shrimp.

Off to the apartment I went, and soon thereafter I began to look them over more closely. These were much larger than mine, and much easier to handle and inspect. So, you get to see a few pictures of these spearers (Oratosquilla oratoria) I took at my kitchen table, and the pot that the rest of them were cooking in while I was playing dissector. Since then I've found that various mantises are also a popular seafood in other parts of Southeast Asia and Italy, as well.

click here for full size picture
These are the 5" food-variety mantises (O. oratoria) seen regularly here in Japan.
While they are spearers, they must be roaming about a lot, as quite a few come up
in fishing nets that don't dig into the bottom sediments.

click here for full size picture click here for full size picture
This is a better look at Oratosquilla oratoria, from the top and bottom.

Aquarium Care for a Mantis:

If you decide that a mantis is the thing for you, you have a few choices when it comes to making a home for them and taking care of them. Putting either type (smasher or spearer) in a reef can obviously be a bad idea if you plan on having much of anything else that is made of meat and moves (or doesn't in the case of barnacles). But, I must say, my little smasher never bothered the large turbos that I know of, or the cleaner shrimp (which was as big as the mantis and stayed at the top of the tank most of the time anyway), or any of the four small fishes, either. It also never posed a threat to the corals. So, I'd think with some appropriate stocking choices, it can be entirely possible to keep a smaller species of mantis in a full-blown reef tank. And, of course, either could also be kept in a non-reef tank, as long as the fishes are big enough to fend for themselves.

Even barnacles aren't safe, as all of a dozen or so
in my tank were cracked in half and cleaned out.

In any case, you'll need to do as much homework as possible (do as I say, not as I do - right?) and will most likely want to find a smaller species to try. All will appreciate a natural setting, including a sand bed and some live or base rock. Many will also be quite pleased at the addition of some appropriate diameter, well-placed PVC pipe, and/or some big gastropod shells to call home, too. Otherwise, a smasher will likely end up building it's own in your rock.

As far as busting out of things goes, fortunately the smaller species won't knock your tank apart. Especially if they are spearers, of course. As long as they are "happy" and don't feel threatened, they won't have any reason to do so anyway. So, don't make them feel threatened. The "tank busting" stories are actually very few and very far between as best as I can tell. Sometime ago, I did read that it is a good idea to put a piece of plexiglass on the bottom of the tank, under the sand, which would be cheap and easy. So, it may be worth the two dollars for a little peace of mind if nothing else. Of course, an all acrylic tank would probably hold up much better, too, if you're that worried about it.

When it comes to feeding, not everyone has access to free hermits. But, fortunately most if not all mantises will adapt to aquarium life and will take other foods. Pieces of meaty foods are appreciated for sure, but as I pointed out, shrimp pellets, flake food, and brine shrimp worked fine for me, too.

Again, the key here (for the least probability of troubles) is to do your homework on a species and then buy it. Not the other way around. The Lurker's Guide to Stomatopods, and the Reef Central forum dedicated to mantis shrimps are excellent places to start. Maybe choose an appropriate species and have someone order it for you. You get the idea...

Aquarium Rescue from a Mantis:

For everyone else. Spearers live in burrows in sediments, not live rock. So, it is rare for them to be added to an aquarium unintentionally. However, smashers live in rocks, and can often survive shipping, thus they are accidentally added with some regularity. Then they start eating, and you know the rest of the story. So, if you have a pest mantis and want to get rid of it, there are numerous methods you can try. I've obviously only used one method myself, so I can't promise how well any of the rest of these work (or won't), but these are what I came up with and collected from other sources (primarily from Juan, 1998 and Delbeek & Sprung, 1994) that sound reasonable enough. There are many others that do not...

If the evictee-to-be lives in a particular rock, you can try the first few suggestions from the list below. Pay attention though, as mantises often have a"back door" exit and can scoot out of their favorite rock and hide elsewhere, leaving you to think it must have somehow gotten trapped in the rock and/or mysteriously evaporated. The rest are suggestions in case you don't know where exactly it lives, or if removing rocks just won't work for you.

- Remove the whole rock and put it in another aquarium where the thing won't be a problem. The happy ending for everyone.

- Remove the piece and put it in another container of aquarium water, then wait for the mantis to venture out at some point and quickly snatch the rock out and put it back where it came from. You'll need to move fast and/or devise some method to prevent the mantis from getting back into the rock, though. They're speedy and wary. Baby care products are some of the most needed products in Babies R Us catalogue.

- Remove the piece and pour carbonated water into the mantis' hole. The fizzing and carbon dioxide should drive it out (hopefully not into your lap), after which you can put the rock back in place. Pouring boiling water down the hole would work, too, although the mantis may get poached in place and not come out.

- For some reason, no one mentioned removing the piece and throwing it into the backyard. Another option...

- Simply try to spear the mantis with a piece of wire, coat hanger, or ice pick, etc. (many sources, of course).

- Put the intake hose from a canister filter over the hole and see if you can suck the mantis out. Probing the hole with a wire from the other end may help drive it into the intake, as well. I'd make sure to be there though, as a small but very unhappy smasher may decide to exit your canister through the side if given the opportunity.

- Hold some scissors over the hole, use something to bait the mantis out, or a wire to drive it out, etc. and try to snip fast enough to cut the mantis in half when it sticks its head out. While it worked for at least one person, if you aren't exceptionally patient and/or quick, I envision this technique leading to the same facial, oral, and physiological responses that I experience after teeing a ball into the pond three times in a row.

- Depending on what else is in the aquarium, try adding a bird wrasse (Gomphosus varius), an Australian dottyback (Labracinus lineatus), or an octopus. All eat mantises, but the wrasse and octopus also eat a wide variety of other invertebrates and small fishes and the dottyback can be overly aggressive. So, once they've done the mercenary work they may need to be removed themselves. Also note that someone suggested the use of a triggerfish on a message board, but a reply told the story of a wholesaler giving away a mantis that had killed six triggers in a single night. I also read somewhere about an occasion when a mantis beat the tar out of an octopus. But, I'm sure size comes into play in such cases though.

- There are traps of sorts available for catching unwanted critters. I have a small one called an "X-terminator" that has a spring-loaded trap door apparatus, which might work fine for a really small mantis. Likewise, for larger ones, you may be able to find a suitable piece of equipment from an aquarium supplier, or some sort of minnow/bait trap at a fishing supply store. Just make sure to get the trap out of the tank before the thing decides to make it's own escape route.

- Try my expedient trapping method (which did work, as it was after the trapping when the problems started). I'd do the same thing again as a first choice to tell the truth, although I'd be sure to use something made out of heavy plastic the first time, instead of glass. And again, one last time, move quickly if this works.

- Or, maybe all you need to do is find a big enough pistol shrimp...

If you hear an unidentified popping noise coming from your aquarium, don't panic (yet). It could be a mantis, but it could also be a pistol shrimp. If it's a pistol, you don't have to worry, as they are quite benign and shouldn't cause any trouble. A mantis at work will tend to produce several sharp ticking sounds as it smacks rocks, but a pistol makes a really, really loud popping sound, and usually only two or three at most at a time.

Regardless of what you try, remember to keep your hands (fingers) to yourself!



If you have any questions about this article, please visit my author forum on Reef Central.

Selected references and other good places to get more info:

Caldwell, R. L. and H. Dingle. 1975. Stomatopods. Scientific American, 234:80-89.

Caldwell, R. L. 1985. A test of individual recognition in the stomatopod Gonodactylus festae. Animal Behavior, 33:101-106.

Caldwell, R. L. 1992. Recognition, signaling and reduced aggression between former mates in a stomatopod. Animal Behavior, 44:11-19.

Caldwell, R. L. 2004. Personal communication.

Calfo, A. and R. Fenner. 2003. The Natural Marine Aquarium Series: Reef Invertebrates, An Essential Guide to Selection, Care, and Compatibility. Reading Trees, Monroeville, PA.

Cronin, T. W. and Marshall, N. J. 1989. A retina with at least ten spectral types of photoreceptors in a mantis shrimp. Nature, 339:137-139.

Cronin, T. W., N. J. Marshall, and M.F. Land. 1994. Vision in mantis shrimps. American Science, 82:356-365.

Delbeek, J. C. and J. Sprung. 1994. The Reef Aquarium: Volume One. Ricordea Publishing, Coconut Grove, FL.

Ensinger, P. A. 2001. Life Under the Sun. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Fossa, S. and A. Nilsen. 2000. The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium, Volume 3. Birgit Schmettkamp Velag, Bornheim, Germany.

Juan, A. S. 1998. The Lurker's Guide to Stomatopods.

Marshall, N. J., M. F. Land, C. A. King and T. W. Cronin. 1991. The compound eyes of mantis shrimps (Crustacea, Hoplocarida, Stomatopoda). I. Compound eye structure: the detection of polarized light. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 334:33-56.

Marshall, N. J., M. F. Land, C. A. King and T. W. Cronin. 1991. The compound eyes of mantis shrimps (Crustacea, Hoplocarida, Stomatopoda). II. Polychromatic vision by serial and lateral filtering. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 334:57-84.

Rupert, E. E. and R. D. Barnes. 1994. Invertebrate Zoology, 6th ed. Saunders College Publishing, Fort Worth, TX.

The Discovery Channel. 1998. Predators and Prey.

The Reef Central Mantis Shrimp Forum.




Reefkeeping Magazine™ Reef Central, LLC-Copyright © 2008

A Load of Learnin' About Mantis Shrimps by James Fatherree - Reefkeeping.com