O. scyllarus smashing glass

[Gonodactylus]

For a promotional photo, I was asked to take a photo of a stomatopod breaking glass. I placed a pane of thin glass near the front of the aquarium and put a crab behind the glass. I then used a sound trigger to fire the strobes a few millisenconds after impact. This was one of the better results.

Roy

 

[amcarrig]

WOW! Very cool Dr. Roy! Thanks for sharing that!

 

[majestic sea life]

nice!!! thats awsome!

 

[Tballa]

Thats sweet!!!!!!Wow, that must have been hard to do,because of how fast the strike is. Did it actually break through the glass, or just crack it? Nice pic!

 

[amcarrig]

Dr. Roy: I'm curious as to how thick the glass was?

 

[Obi-dad]

Annick, you asking how thick to see whether your tank is safe? :eek1:

 

[Gonodactylus]

If you look near the left dactyl, you can see many small pieces of glass. It was completely shattered. There is a large piece reflecting in the bottom.

I cheated and used thin glass such as is used in picture frames. I shot a few breaks with ordinary window glass, but the effect wasn't as spectacular because the glass broke or cracked into large pieces.

I didn't have to be fast to get the shot. The camera was tripped by a sound trigger that fired when the first sound waves hit the hydrophone.

 

[amcarrig]

Annick, you asking how thick to see whether your tank is safe?

Hey Greg. Mine is just a little n. wennerae and the nano is acrylic so, if I'm not mistaken, it's not tough enough to crack the tank

Thanks for that info Dr. Roy. It's pretty darned impressive even if the glass wasn't terribly thick.

 

[T-T-Trigger]

You know we all eat up pics like that!! Thanks for thinking of us and posting it, very nice.

 

[megamegamantis]

i hope you let him have the crab after that.

 

[amcarrig]

Hey Dr. Roy. Quick question. I was watching a nature documentary on the Discovery Science channel last week and there was some footage of a peacock smashing a wine glass to get to a crab. Because of the way it was pieced together, it was impossible to tell if the mantis was in fact smashing the wine glass and not any other piece of glass, however, the glass smashing footage looked very similar to the pics you've posted here. I'm wondering if the shot was pieced together using your pictures?

 

[Gonodactylus]

I've been in the field in French Polynesia for the past two weeks, so I haven't seen the footage. My guess is that they used footage of glass breaking that I helped the BBC film for Fastest Claw. This has been sold to several companies. On the other hand, it would not be hard to do with the right equipment. I have a couple of O. s. in the lab right now that have been trained to strike targets under bright lights and they would take apart a crab in a wine glass. Last month we succeeded filming a stomatopod striking a target at 100,000 frames a second - somthing that last year I would have thought was impossible.

Roy

 

[amcarrig]

French Polynesia?! Sigh...that sounds good right about now

Thanks for that info Dr. Roy. For some reason, I was under the impression that a glass break like that had yet to be caught on film.

 

[Gonodactylus]

We filmed about 25 strikes by a large O. scyllarus male breaking glass. We used a 16mm Redlake camera filming at 500 f/s. This is the footage that BBC, National Geographic and I think Discovery are using. I also shot a bunch of stills using a sound trigger, but of course the image is always about 5-10 msec post impact.

Since then using ultra-high speed video, we have filmed strikes at 100,000 f/s, but no glass breaking - just impacts on snails and force transducers.

Roy