My Ultimate Multi Mantis System(s)

[Calappidae]

Another bbc believer?

To my knowledge and experience..

I've been shot, my yellow tang been shot right in the face, my arrow crab has been shot, by a 3" tiger pistol shrimp, nothing.. They're ment to "scare" away with the loud snap as well as find mates rather than to kill. They're not predators like the bbc world's deadliest videos make them out to be.. if anything they're more harmless than they are threatening IMO. It is true about the whole cavitation bubble thing their snap makes.

Nothing including myself has ever recieved injury from direct close range pistol shrimp shots.


I did hear from someone that Dr. caldwell mentioned a shot to the face would kill a mantis but I heard that from somebody else not directly him. There is also a youtube video of a mantis just taking shots, right to the face infact, one after another without feeling or showing any signs of injury or "paralysis" from the repeated shots. Mantis won in the end

Correct me if I'm wrong but that's just what I experienced and seen.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Let's say we put a 2" pistol shrimp up against a 2" smasher mantis shrimp, open field, no terrain advantage for either... Which one do you think would win?

Probably more often than not, the mantis would win. I had a tiger pistol shrimp, and he would snap at other inhabitants (usually the skunk cleaner shrimp when they'd try to steal his food) and never once did he injure or kill anything. The mantis would go straight for the snapping claw and knock it off or disable it (like they do with crab claws). Then, shrimp dinner.

 

[Kharn]

The pistol I read about slaying a Stomatopod was from an author in CORAL magazine, he wrote about it within the Stomatopod edition (blue book o.scyllarus cover).

 

[Kharn]

I collect loads of pistol shrimp when I find crabs they are totally harmless to humans infact if you stand upon the mudflats you will hear billions of them popping away! Very different pop to a Stomatopods swinging appendage.

 

[Kharn]

Ever heard of pistol shrimp? They work a little like mantises; they snap this massively powerful claw shut and it works like a sonic weapon. A smallish one, say 2", feels like getting hit with a big rubber band. It hurts! A bigger one can kill things.
Let's say we put a 2" pistol shrimp up against a 2" smasher mantis shrimp, open field, no terrain advantage for either... Which one do you think would win? What if it was a stabber mantis?
What about snowflake moray vs. smasher? Stabber?
Foot-long shark baby vs. large smasher?
I don't plan on trying any of these... It's just curiosity, and I figure that since there are plenty of mantis people on this thread, I might get some fairly accurate answers.

As far as I am concerned...the Stomatopods are the worlds most formidable predator weight for weight...

Therefore anything of the same size and weight going up against a Stomatopod...is highly likely to loose...

 

[Calappidae]

I can't break glass.. only my hand when trying to. Stomatopod beat me to it already!

Imagine if they were the same size as us.. what could they destroy in a single blow? I don't think any material would be able to take the "hit".

 

[Kharn]

I can't break glass.. only my hand when trying to. Stomatopod beat me to it already!

Imagine if they were the same size as us.. what could they destroy in a single blow? I don't think any material would be able to take the "hit".

Something I have put forward many times....

 

[Betta132]

Imagine those got to car-size... They'd kill whales. I don't think anything could withstand a punch from one that big, aside from maybe a few dozen feet of steel! Something that big could take on just about any superhero... And imagine if it was able to crawl around on land indefinitely! All that armor and incredibly keen vision... Woah. We'd have problems.
And for the record... Really big pistols (5") can kill things like small fish and shrimp. I know they aren't predators, technically, but the huge ones can cause some damage. I've been shot by my 2 1/2" pistol... Hurt, but it didn't do any damage. He's also shot a small damsel and a 1" shrimp. The damsel was fine, despite being shot in the face, and the shrimp looked sort of stunned for a bit but then recovered. He does kill small bristleworms, though... He pokes at them a bit, and you can see them writhing around, then he shoots them and they stop. I'm not sure if they're stunned or dead, but he drags them down into his burrow and I've seen him eating them, so I assume that possibly he kills them by shooting. They don't have a shell, though, so that isn't incredibly impressive.
I think those films they have, where a pistol shoots a shrimp and then drags it down into his burrow, the pistol is just planning to use the shrimp as shoring or something. Mine collects pebbles and stuff and uses them to line the edges of his burrow, and he's done it with everything from algae, to shells, to shrimp molts, to even a snail that later decided to crawl away. I bet they'd do that with anything conveniently sized...
Oh, I just remembered! In a lot of those videos, there's a break between the shooting and the dragging. Maybe they put a dead shrimp near the burrow and let the pistol take it, then cut the footage together to make it look like the pistol killed the cleaner shrimp. I know they'll happily drag dead things down into their tunnel to eat.

 

[Kharn]

On the side of myth and fantasy...

My guesstimations for a lone smasher, 6ft long, 100kg or adult human size. Could create a tremendous amount of force that could likely destroy the planet...

Striking the sea floor to make a burrow could create earthquakes which when formed underwater cause tidal waves and tsunamis....

WHY hollywood has chosen to ignore the Stomatopods is beyond me...I really just think they don't "know" about their existence...they yield so much more potential then ANY animal used in a "monster flick" and the brilliant part of it is that they need very little fantasy to become terrifying monsters...

Give them the ability to live on land as proficiently as they do in water.
Give them greater size.

And that's all that need be done.

 

[Calappidae]

To the OP,

Pistol shrimp are Scavengers, and sometimes herbivores. Scavenger meaning it'll eat what it can easily get it's hands (or claws) on. Herbivore meaning their primary vegaterian.

They're not carnivours meaning hunters and killers like stomatopods (although I was corrected that even hunters are also capable of being scavengers in a way which is completely true after I looked at it from a different point of view)

Pistol shrimp, parallel to stomatopods are also blind. Hence why they live with gobies which has proper eyesight. Even if they were hunters, they flat out can't see to aim.

The whole "ZOMG PISTOL SHRAMP KEELS EVERY1 INCLOODING MANTI SHRAMP!" all originated from BBC. BBC, as well as natgeo (actually I think it might have been natgeo that started this..) are well known for overdramatizing..

Just look at the sound effects.. a pistol shrimp makes a simple loud "snap" that you can even make with your fingers. What do they make it as? It apparently sounds like a shotgun. Tipical of sound alternation from anywhere, however, yes, they can make the bubble, and yes they can reach hotter than the sun, however they do not kill intentionally, or ment to kill in any way.. just to scare away..

Naturally they want a show not just talk.. they want to audience to feel like the shrimp is something truely deadly rather than saying the truth.. "So this pistol shrimp scares away predators and calls for mates making a really loud snapping sound.. BORING lets throw in a half dead cleaner shrimp and just film it scavenging the remains or make a fake custom animation. The audience with never know!"

I'm also questioning the video on mantis shrimp.. one of the world's deadliest videos for mantis shrimp showed their eyesight from a stomatopods point of view.. I find this quite shocking consituring recently it was confirmed in another thread by Dr. caldwell we cannot see for ourselves what a mantis shrimp sees clearly or be capable of replicating it for our own vision (but who knows! I have hope ). They also make the common mistake of saying "They hit with the FORCE of a .22" rather than the acceleration of a .22. Common mistakes we all occasionally make or atleast have made but this mistake is misinforming the public.. if it was a mistake.

 

[Calappidae]

On the side of myth and fantasy...

My guesstimations for a lone smasher, 6ft long, 100kg or adult human size. Could create a tremendous amount of force that could likely destroy the planet...

Striking the sea floor to make a burrow could create earthquakes which when formed underwater cause tidal waves and tsunamis....

WHY hollywood has chosen to ignore the Stomatopods is beyond me...I really just think they don't "know" about their existence...they yield so much more potential then ANY animal used in a "monster flick" and the brilliant part of it is that they need very little fantasy to become terrifying monsters...

Give them the ability to live on land as proficiently as they do in water.
Give them greater size.

And that's all that need be done.

Yikes!

When you really think about it they are pretty destructive. They would probably do damage to a huge mountain cracking the interior maybe causing eruptions leading to a "black sky" causing lack of sunlight resulting in climate changes followed by earthquakes (actually pretty scary..)

If they hit sediment it would mostly be like a dust storm since it's not a solid piece like a mountian or similar structure would be. Same with dirt, hit's the ground, uproots a large tree, and dust flies everywhere. It mainly leads down to the part of earth being hit.. and for how many stomatopods there are in the world.. we'd be gone before they'd even hunt us all down just from worldly destruction.

This would be one heck of a plot twist! However it'd be too fast of a movie.

It's ashame how unreconized stomatopods really are.. You must feel in for hollywood! :spin3:

 

[Kharn]

Well if it's all Myth & Fantasy then there is no reason to not step back a bit and "enjoy" the "massacre", yes in a "LOL...reality sense" Stomatopods like this, would just quickly and swiftly kill and consume most life they could reach...but for the sake of cinema you can stretch this out for as long as you want and I know the...

PERFECT example...

"I'm guessing you questioned why Frodo didn't just ride that giant eagle to mordor to drop the ring into mount doom safely, quickly, done ?"

It's a movie xD!

 

[Kharn]

You could stretch it out for as long as you wanted THAT is dependent solely on how the movie ends and the reception of it, was it poor, don't make another, was it loved, make another, did it completely end leaving no available buildup to a followup, kind of screwing yourself...did it end openly with the hint of another ?

In cinema ANYTHING is possible and NOTHING "would just be to quickly and swiftly" that it's missed, defies the whole point of entertainment which is what the cinema is.

 

[Kharn]

With the concept of somehow all of a sudden all the Stomatopods in the world just grew bigger then yeah that I think leaves it a bit to stretched...there would be billions of billions of Stomatopods out there and once they suddenly reach that human size...the planet wouldn't even be able to fit everything let alone all of them xD...be a very weird shot from outer space...give them aliens something to think about...

Back to it...

I think a more refined approach is needed something along the bounds of a unique group of stomatopods (perhaps being tested on in a Lab) that some how escaped, then over the years, they bred in the wild and this is how the human sized ones come about.

One Stomatopod alone already lays hundreds/thousands of eggs...all they need is 1 unique mother for that species, then the rest born from her will share the "traits" from testing, etc.

 

[Nightwitch]

Not to bust up the monster movie party, but if we assume that the peak force of the largest peacock mantis (18cm or so) is around 1500N, judging from the Patek and Caldwell paper on force and cavitation in the mantis strike, and we then scale the mantis up to 180cm (six feet), assuming all other parameters being equal, we'd expect 10x the force. (Granted exoskeletons can't get this big, and scale is incredibly complicated, but for the sake of a monster movie, let's drastically oversimplify). So that would give us 15,000N of force. This is 3x the force of a heavyweight boxer's punch, and 1.5x the force of a kick from a top level Muay Thai fighter. So, it's not hugely outside of the forces of other animals in nature. However, given the relative inelasticity of any collision involving a stomatopod raptorial appendage, we can expect proportionately more damaging wounds.

But don't count us humans out yet. We have our own raptorial appendages - they're called tools. I study human raptorial appendages in a prehistoric context to assess their efficacy and their use in subsistence strategies and warfare. Our tools give us a competitive advantage even against the best armaments available in nature. A sword is effectively a lever, artificially increasing the length of the arm, and thus increasing the amount of force that it strikes with. A sword wielded one-handed strikes with about 12,000 newtons of force, and the force is greater when wielded two-handed. I don't have the stats for two-handed sword forces yet, but baseball bats have been recorded as producing up to 18,000N of force by professional players. So, this is a bit more than our made-up monster mantis. But not a lot more. So, we could consider a made-up monster mantis' strike as being about as forceful as a major leaguer teeing off on you with his Louisville Slugger.

For another dose of perspective, a grizzly bear is estimated at 2.5-5x the strength of a human. So, a grizzly bear paw swipe is probably somewhere on the order of 20,000 newtons. Interesting to know that for all the talk of our small stature and frailty, this figure isn't much above what a human can do with a simple piece of wood.

 

[Kharn]

I think your discounting the weight, the size is kind of irrelevant (more for dramatic effect).

Take the weight increase of a 88g 18cm O.scyllarus and make it 100kg ...

 

[Nightwitch]

I think your discounting the weight, the size is kind of irrelevant (more for dramatic effect).

Take the weight increase of a 88g 18cm O.scyllarus and make it 100kg ...

I think using the weight is erroneous as all of the loading rates for chitin-based exoskeletons show they won't perform under those kinds of conditions. Comparing size to size, the mantis shrimp scales up to be a monster. I mean, let's face it - grizzly bears are 10 feet in the big males, not six feet, and the mantis shrimp is awfully close to their strength, just with a simple scalar model.

Maybe a better way to do it would be to assign a mass to the raptorial appendage and then use the acceleration data from the Patek and Caldwell article to tabulate a potential force. Give me a minute on that...

 

[Kharn]

I am keen to learn as much as I can about what their closest true potential at the size would be (but we all know that this likely won't happen for the animal won't be able to support itself) at either end it's going to be bad...I can't see a 6ft Stomatopod weighing only 100kg's...something more in the hundreds of kilos, whilst at the same time I cannot see a stomatopod this large striking anything without either killing itself or ripping its appendages off in the process.

But this is the beauty of the cinema there is no boundaries...

 

[Nightwitch]

I think using the weight is erroneous as all of the loading rates for chitin-based exoskeletons show they won't perform under those kinds of conditions. Comparing size to size, the mantis shrimp scales up to be a monster. I mean, let's face it - grizzly bears are 10 feet in the big males, not six feet, and the mantis shrimp is awfully close to their strength, just with a simple scalar model.

Maybe a better way to do it would be to assign a mass to the raptorial appendage and then use the acceleration data from the Patek and Caldwell article to tabulate a potential force. Give me a minute on that...

Right, so the Patek and Caldwell paper gave the acceleration of the peacock strike as something like 10^5 meters per second per second. So, that's 100,000. I assigned a mass to the scaled up raptorial appendage of 465 grams - the same as a standard baseball bat. The resulting force calculation is 46,500 newtons, or roughly 2.5 times the force of a human utilizing a bat of the same mass.

 

[Kharn]

It's the entire concept of the Stomatopod alone that intrigues me and is what I think should be capitalized upon for the sake of cinema their strength/power alone is crazy and wonderful to watch but it's the mix of it all that would make them the "monster".

Those giant powerful strange eyes...
The incredible speed & flexability...
Their amazing survival skills...
The super intelligence...
And then the power as well...

All of it mixed into that "giant" sized "amphibian" monster.