STRIKE MODE

Powerful punches. Flesh-tearing teeth. Deadly talons. We explore the best (or is it the worst?) weapons in the natural world.

- JV CHAMARY

WHEN A PEACOCK mantis shrimp strikes, it generates the heat of a star.

The crustacean retracts a spring-loaded mouthpart known as a dactyl club and puts it on a latch, like a cowboy cocking the hammer of a gun. After pulling the trigger to release the stored elastic potential energy, the club moves like a bullet to reach speeds of up to 31m per second (around 111kph).

The punch is so fast that it lowers the surrounding pressure, causing water to boil and form steam-filled bubbles that suddenly implode by 'cavitation' - a pop of sound, flash of light and temperatures approaching 5,000°C, as hot as the surface of the sun. “Cavitation bubbles collapse and emit an intense burst of energy," explains Sheila Patek, a biologist at Duke University in North Carolina. The bubbles can damage metal if they form around boat propellers, but 'smasher' species of mantis shrimp exploit this force (more than 100 times their bodyweight) to crack open snails or other packaged food. "They evolved hammers and spring-latch mechanical systems to fracture hard-shelled prey with high accelerations," says Patek, whose research focuses on fast and powerful animal movements. "They can produce up to 1,500 Newtons (N) at impact."

A peacock mantis shrimp's punch holds the record for fastest strike in the aquatic world but, on land, the title of fastest gun in the west goes to the Dracula ant. The ant's ultrafast mandibles can close at 90m per second (321kph) in 23 microseconds (more than 4,300 times faster than the blink of an eye) so the vampire can bite through an insect's exoskeleton and drink its blood. But while these tiny jaws are certainly terrific, they wouldn't terrify larger creatures.