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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/how-a-sydney-scientist-became-enamoured-with-the-ferraris-of-the-crustacean-world-and-discovered-a-new-shrimp-species>
"When Prof Shane Ahyong was seven, his mum came home with a bag of prawns from
the fish shop – but one of those things was not like the others.
“It just looked different,” said Ahyong.
“It looked a bit like an armoured lobster just without the big claws. I was
amazed.”
What had caught his eye at his home in Sydney was a mantis shrimp – a
crustacean with some of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom and that
(when it’s not dead in a bag of prawns) can strike prey so fast it can be akin
to a bullet shooting from a gun.
That chance encounter helped spark a career studying marine life – in
particular, mantis shrimps and what he calls their “superpowers” of incredible
speed and vision.
And Ahyong’s latest discovery – a mantis shrimp so unusual it needed its own
new genus – has now been named as one of the top 10 most remarkable discoveries
of 2024 by the World Register of Marine Species in a list that includes a worm
that mimics coral, a carnivorous sponge and a sea star that lives on sunken
wood."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
