Mantis shrimp are pretty much the world's coolest crustaceans.
Don't be fooled by their tiny arms: A mantis shrimp could punch you at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour if it wanted to.
Just look at this one destroy a clam.
Oh and they can also catch fish.
They're pretty colorful too. Which seems to make sense when you realize they have four times as many color receptors in their eyes as humans do.
But now scientists think mantis shrimp might not actually be seeing all that many colors after all.
They can see wavelengths of light ranging from deep ultraviolet to far infrared — outside the range of human vision. But it turns out mantis shrimp may not be able to distinguish between some colors that we can easily tell apart, like dark yellow and light orange.
Scientists from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan conducted tests where they gave the shrimp a reward if they chose the correct colored object. But they often failed to choose the right one.
Scientists realized that the shrimp are using a completely different method to process color.
Which is actually pretty cool in itself. Well done, mantis shrimp.
