So this is a mantis shrimp.

And mantis shrimp are called mantis shrimp after the praying mantises, which also have a fast feeding appendage.

And this is a spearing mantis shrimp, or stomatopod.

This was how mantis shrimps make these very fast strikes.

I'm going to show you the mantis shrimp approaching the snail.

Like when my son transformed into a praying mantis for Halloween.

So, mantis shrimp come in two varieties there are spearers and smashers.

And mantis shrimp are officially the fastest measured feeding strike of any animal system.

That praying mantis is made from a single sheet of paper no scotch tape, no cuts.

This is a recording I made of a mantis shrimp that's found off the coast of California.

So, actually, I started working on what's called the mantis shrimp a few years ago because they make sound.

And what he showed in mantis shrimp is that they use what's called a catch mechanism, or click mechanism.

Now, the other type of mantis shrimp is the smasher stomatopod, and these guys open up snails for a living.

So the next and final question was, well, how much force does a mantis shrimp produce if they're able to break open snails?

And while I was struggling to figure out how and why mantis shrimp, or stomatopods, make sound, I started to think about their appendages.

And then we did a series of calculations, and what we were able to show is that these mantis shrimp have to have a spring.

When our First Nations Inuit and Mantis communities are being ravaged by a suicide rate 5 6 times higher than the national average, that's not acceptable.

And if folding a single praying mantis from a single uncut square wasn't interesting enough, then you could do two praying mantises from a single uncut square.

And if any of you ever have a chance, backstage of the National Museum of Natural History is one of the world's best collections of preserved mantis shrimp.

And if we slow it down a bit, this is the mantis shrimp the same species recorded at 1,000 frames a second, played back at 15 frames per second.

So, this what I saw, on every single mantis shrimp limb, whether it's a spearer or a smasher, is a beautiful saddle shaped structure right on the top surface of the limb.