How a Sydney scientist became enamoured with the ‘Ferraris of the crustacean world’ – and discovered a new shrimp species | Marine life

When Professor Shen was seven years old, his mother returned home with a shrimp bag from the fish store – but one of these things was not like others.

“It looked different,” said Ahyong.

“It looked like an armored sea locust without large claws. I was surprised.”

What had caught his attention in his home in Sydney was the shrimp shrimp – crustaceans with some of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, and that (when he did not die in a bag of a dump) he can strike a prey very quickly that can be closer to fire from the gun.

This meeting helped the opportunity to raise a profession in studying marine life – in particular, shrimp in Mantis and what it calls “great powers” from the amazing speed and vision.

And the latest discovery of Ahyong – a very unusual Mantis shrimp that he needs his new gender – was now It was called as one of the 10 best noticeable discoveries for 2024 Through the global marine record in a list that includes a worm that mimics coral, meat sponge and the star of the sea that lives on the sunken wood.

Certainly a new type

The story of the newly discovered shrimp shrimp Incetasquilla Chimera – It started in 2008 when Japanese scientists found a sample while conducting marine life polls off the coast of Ninjo in western Australia.

They sent it to AHYONG – which is now a global body on shrimp in Mantis – who was working at the National Institute of Water and Air Country in New Zealand research.

“Once I saw him, I thought: it is definitely a new type – the shape of the tail and head fan – everything was unlike any kind I saw before,” said Ahyong, who is now the chief scientist in the Australian Museum in Sydney.

The Japanese Ahyong colleagues later found the same shrimp Mantis living off IHEYA Island in Japan.

There are many shrimp families, but Ahyong could not make this new discovery suitable for disgusting with any of them – despite the discovery of about 100 new species of shrimp shrimp.

“He had features that you could find in three families – it crashed a little bit. It looked like a mixture of three different families.”

the New types It is about 9 cm in length-it is small to average for the mandis-“great” fake lines and fake eye games on their tail, both of which confuse the potential predators.

Some of the shrimp in Mantis have sharp clubs as claws that they use for the disease through the heroic shells and snails.

Others, such as WhatsApp, have throats with the spine that they can shake the West to the outside – they reveal them and strike at least four thousand seconds, at a speed of up to 8 meters per second, where they make a fast spear that moves like small fish.

Ahyong said: “She reveals the claw quickly and turns in their prey-it looks like a dust dust knife. But the only way you can see is with a very slow camera.”

Mantis shrimp also has some of the most complex eyes in the natural world. Each eye has a microscopic vision, which means that it can incur incredibly accurate distances, and each one can move independently from the other. As they see in a group of spectrum lights that humans cannot see.

“Ferraris from the world of crustaceans”

Two years before the Marqa Mantis appeared in the prawns bag, AHYONG’s interest in marine invertebrates was launched with a birthday gift from aunt – a copy of the Australian Cortical Book in 1970.

Ahyong said: “I was the child who turned every rock on the beach.”

By the age of fourteen, he had shrimp mans as a pet.

He still has one in the aquarium tank at home but he was not named.

The previous one lived for eight years and was called Lily, after the wife of his teacher – the late Ray Manning, one of the curators at the Smithsonian Institute.

Ahyong says: “I never get tired of seeing them.”

“Once they are attacked as a special, they will come and touch your hand. But after that, the prey returned to work – no mercy.

“They have a reputation for being a little brutal. But I think they are strong with a great deal of grace and ingenuity.

“They are like Ferrari of the Crustacean World.”