Yes indeed, we have more True Facts from Ze Frank, and this time, they’re about shrimp. Not one of which has anything to do with eating them, either.
Naturally, I can’t let it go at that, because ego. Plus the fact (true) that I’ve had two of the varieties that he featured close at hand, when I maintained a basic saltwater aquarium during my tenure in Florida. The first would be the pistol, or snapping, shrimp:
I actually had this one for a while before I stumbled upon the correct species, which is bigclaw snapping shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis.) Which helped explain a peculiar occurrence some weeks previous to that, because I’d been almost asleep when I heard a sharp ‘clink!‘ from the aquarium, far too loud for it to be from rocks moved by any of the small crustaceans that I had in there. I actually got up and examined the tank thoroughly, because it sounded like the glass had cracked, but of course I found nothing. Later on when I’d discovered the species and its habits, I realized what I’d heard.
I only have a handful of photos, because my specimen here was quite shy and tended not to venture out in the light often (unlike the little crab alongside her, which was quite brazen.) I don’t recall how I’d captured this one, though I certainly wasn’t treated to its namesake attack, but I do recall being down on the docks at night, examining things in the water by flashlight, and hearing the occasional sharp report from nearby, trying to determine what caused them; I now know that I had no hope of actually seeing it in action.
But it was on one of the nighttime foraging trips that I snagged the other example, which is seen in the video but not named:
This is a grass shrimp (Palaemon paludosus,) and the lighting is faintly deceptive; I was using an off-camera flash angled to bring up the detail, because this species is really transparent, and a lot of my previous photos had the shrimp hard to make out against the background. Curiously, while I was shining my flashlight down into the water alongside the dock one night, I saw two tiny ruby reflections but nothing else, and finally slipped a small bowl into the water underneath it. I captured it, lost it to my great chagrin, and then recaptured it (or another just like it) in the exact same spot on the piling; the ruby reflections were from those eyes, though I never reproduced the effect in photos. Only about 20-25mm in length, they (I eventually obtained several) were very fond of drifting through the water propelled by their pleopods – I’m not sure where Ze Frank got his info, but that’s the name of those little legs under the abdomen, that you unfortunately cannot make out in this image. Yet if danger threatened, or if they simply touched something they didn’t like with their antennae, the tail would snap down and propel them backwards several centimeters in an eyeblink. They were also easy to care for, since they foraged for algae and debris on clumps of weeds, which I’d replenish a couple of times a week while getting fresh water – none of that stuff that you see in the background is growing.
I haven’t the faintest education in marine biology, but I was picking up a significant amount just by having the aquarium – and easy access to the sound of course. Never did spot an octopus, though, one of my great regrets.