The Mantis Shrimp

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we are going to be

talking about

the mantis shrimp my spirit animal i'm

pretty sure that the mantis shrimp is my

spirit animal

and we did talk about the mana shrimp a

little ways back when we were talking

about evolution and all these different

animals but

we just really felt like we did not give

enough time

to the manta shrimp so we're going to

delve a little more into the manta

shrimp and what that guy's all about

yeah since we first mentioned the mantis

shrimp we have made a few vague

references to him and true i think some

of our audience who joined us a little

bit later on

in our progress have probably thought

why do they keep bringing up the mantis

shrimp there's got to be something

special about

mantis shrimp well and we're gonna make

sure that they understand exactly why

the manta shrimp

is quite possibly the greatest animal on

god's

well blue earth since he lives in the

water i was gonna say god's green earth

but

i guess it's god's blue earth if they

live in the water

yeah depending where you're viewing it

from because it's true i don't think

once you're under water it looks blue

does it

i don't know i'm colorblind that is true

also yeah

so as neither of us claim to be experts

in an

anthropology we need to explain first of

all that

unlike the wasp which was clearly an

error being invented so whether you take

natural selection or

an omnipotent deity the wasp was an

error

right so to make up for it either

natural selection or

the uh omnipotent deity created the

mantis shrimp which is in the top five

species of all time

if you're using badass as a parameter

for the ranking system so along with the

honey badger

right you know the mantis shrimp is in

that list is in there

out of uh achievement okay so honey

badger versus manta shrimp do you put

the manta shrimp up higher than the

honey badger

it's a difficult one really i i really

don't understand

why you have so many problems with your

microphone stand

here well

i pushed it all the way uh you're doing

something british wrong you're trying to

do it

backwards see now you just about knocked

the dang thing

completely off the table for those of

you listening i'm i'm

watching the wondrous craftsmanship here

of our fancy chinese 10

microphone arm things that we have our

microphones attached to

and i think we finally got it fixed so i

don't know

we're doing some more looking just make

sure it doesn't all right

all right and we're back and we're back

in the room

where are we oh you're asking me where

yeah so honey badger

versus mantis shrimp is the honey badger

more badass than the manta shrimp or is

the mantis shrimp more bad ass than the

honey badger

well given we live on land i'm assuming

the honey badger would be more useful

outside of an aquarium there's not much

we can do with a manta shrimp

true so probably the manta shrimp and

the honey badger never gonna fight

because the honey badger would have to

you know get in the ocean or the mantis

shrimp would have to get out of the

ocean

yeah and they're both too stubborn to do

either one of those things so

we're never gonna see that happen yeah

i've gone through a lot of different

scenarios in my mind about

when and how they could meet and just

decided look one's gonna be our best

aqua animal the other one's gonna be our

best on land animals no that makes sense

or you could use spongebob rules right

because the squirrel lives

under there with the little you know

space helmet on

could work that way yeah and i'd just

like to say at this point we do not

currently have an

aerial spiritual animal so there are any

representatives from any

local aviaries in the state of texas or

elsewhere

we are open to actually being sponsored

by a badass

bird what about ducks sure yeah

all right we took care of that one right

yeah okay so

manchester shrimp has been kicking

around for about 340 million years

i'm not talking about just one

particular amount of shrimp this is them

as a

as a species yeah so his scientific name

is stomatapoda stomatapoda

why do all those scientific names have

to be so complicated well so you can

sound smart

oh i automatically sounded smart when i

started to read it except when i

mispronounced it the first time then it

kind of got me back to square one again

yep there you go so it's average size is

between

8 and 10 inches which puts us to shame

yep and

some mantis shrimp have been measured up

to 18 inches

wow yeah that's a big sucker yeah that

is a big

so i'm thinking the our original

aquarium idea of hey let's get some

mantis shrimp we need to go beyond the

kind of

eight inch by 12 inch by 16 inch idea

right but you know we were thinking

about like one of those little 10 gallon

aquariums i think i've got one in the

garage somewhere

he's gonna be pissed if he can't turn

around yeah that's a good point

probably need to avoid keeping the

goldfish in with the mountain shrimp

like we originally said as well oh

that's right yeah

that's two aquariums yeah that's that's

a lot of money to spend though on

two aquariums yeah now just for our

regular listeners who know that the

shepherd's colorblind but very

selectively colorblind

most uh traits of color blindness

it's normal patterns of colors and

collections of colors that colorblind

people can't see but for whatever reason

shepherds is completely random colors

which he wouldn't think he'd mess up

he messes up i do he does and so this is

or it's a very cruel trick people are

pulling on me yeah

and so this is partly why you know the

mantis shrimp is the shepherd's spirit

animal

because the mantis shrimp has 16 color

receptors compared to a human's

three but the mantis shrimp despite

having all of those color receptors are

not actually

good at distinguishing between colors

but they can

see cancer wait stop

cancer how how do they see cancer

there's something in the makeup of a

cancer cell and the way it grows that

apparently

gives off certain i don't know types of

light like

infrared light or ultraviolet light or

something like that keep naming all the

lights we've heard if we might hit on it

uh so you've got fluorescent light

fluorescent light

led light miller light miller light

yeah yeah so it uses one of those

probably not bud likes that tastes like

piss do you know they use

rice to make bud light that won't

surprise me they're proud of it though

it's on the packaging

i never knew that i always knew i didn't

like bud light

and it was always that bud light miller

like coors light right there

you know some people just really get

married to one of those

i used to think they all tasted the same

and then all of a sudden i realized

coors like miller lite are

kind of similar but there was always

this funky kind of taste with bud light

and i never could put my finger on it

until i was walking through the store

and i realized they literally advertise

the fact they use

rice to make bud light they probably

just wash rice off you know wash all the

starch off it

select that water and then just make it

then carbonate it

right you know stir a few hops in there

or barley or whatever

the heck they're using to make the beer

and then it that's bad light

i wonder if the bud light would taste

different if your smartphone got

wet and you threw it in the rice then

you got your smartphone out and then

made bud light

if your smartphone uses 5g that's

automatically going to be dangerous

remember ooh we don't want to go there

so we control okay hang on note to self

stay away from bud light because there

could be some 5g

stuff in the bug all right hey

we're trying to take care of our

listeners so i don't know if that

is the exact reason why the mantis

shrimp is able to see cancer but that's

pretty much what i could gather from

reading a sentence that it could see

cancer and not reading the follow-on

bit so do you think if you go to like

one of those places like the uh what is

it the

md anderson cancer center or

cancer centers of america you know

basically all of the places that get

their advertising on the game show

network do you think they have manta

shrimp there just like hanging out in

aquariums

of course they're probably in the

waiting room so by the time they come in

they don't waste all that time on the

diagnosis

the doctor just looks at the mantis

shrimp says what about him the mantis

shrimp like yeah he's got cancer

and that's pretty much the diagnosis

then you can go straight to the

treatment part

that's why those hospitals have such

high success rates in treating cancers

because the mantis shrimp does all the

diagnosis in the waiting room

well there you go so i love that do they

hold up little signs like

yes and no or do they actually talk they

tap on the glass

oh like morse code type thing oh okay

yeah so there we are the mantis shrimp

can see cancer and the shepherd

count make out the different colors and

the domino's pizza logo

right yeah and the mantis shrimp knows

morse code

yeah and he knows morse code so on

average and mantis shrimp

lives roughly 20 years now that's on

average so you could have some 43 year

old mantis shrimp

kicking out there okay so that makes

sense yeah some other mantis shrimp

which i don't know i might live in a

dodgy neighborhood might

only have a life expectancy because of

gang membership and

might die at 13 or 14 i don't know well

yeah but doesn't

natural selection kind of play into this

so only the strong

mantis shrimp are going to live into

their 40s and

some of that you know that's how it

averages out so the weak ones probably

get killed by the strong ones

yeah but amazingly enough it seems to be

a complete

same pattern as with humans that most

mantis shrimp die in gun free zones

really yeah that's terrible yeah we're

allowed guns there's less mantis shrimp

actually dying

and that makes a sad stat but nobody

wants to talk about it

yeah so it can breed about 20

20 to 30 times during its lifetime which

makes it either an irish catholic or a

mormon i'm not sure which

but i wonder what religion they do

practice could it be the flying

spaghetti monster

that's not a religion yeah it is the

flying spaghetti monster that's a

religion

yeah the pastafarians that's a

legitimate religion

i actually am an ordained minister

of the church of the flying spaghetti

monster because i had to

marry somebody and i had to get ordained

by some

kind of legitimate religion so i looked

that up and

all i had to do was pay 20 bucks through

paypal and got a certificate i think i

lost it though

i lost this certificate but it's good

for lifetime

you know you don't have to do any

continuing education or anything like

that

so yeah i am an ordained minister of the

church of the flying spaghetti monster

sure there's more to that story we'll

have to revisit that in another episode

i think

so the only interaction between males

and females with mantis shrimp occurs

during mating

so i mean it's kind of copied the rap

community a little bit there

right yeah you know so basically they're

saying

there's only one reason we need to talk

to the

opposite sex and we all know what that

reason is

yeah also although um do you think that

manta shrimp

are rappers though like do you think

they have musical

talent well if they did they wouldn't be

rapping would they

well probably not now if there is a

kanye west

equivalent of the mantis shrimp we are

willing to pay a high dollar

but do you think kanye west has an

aquarium in his house that has manta

shrimp in it and he's just not telling

anybody maybe that's the secret of his

dragon power

hmm see that makes sense yeah can you

imagine if kanye west would have

actually got elected to the white house

and then

rather than having like the white house

dog or the white house cat

he had the white house manta shrimp yeah

probably bite less people than the

current than you know than biden's dogs

you know

that that poor dog you know i feel sorry

for him i mean

you know you think about when you take

care of somebody's dog or you take care

of somebody's cat or whatever they're in

a new environment

they're a little bit freaked out and

just think you know you're living the

dog's life you're hanging out you're

catching balls and fetching sticks and

having fun

next thing you know you got all these

people around your house granted big

nice yard little rose garden to you know

bury bones in and

in play but of course that poor dog is a

little bit freaked out

i think he got the the proverbial short

end of the stick no

i'm on the dog's side on this one i read

both circumstances my

i'm not siding with the dog but also one

actually one area where i do side with

the dog

is that the dog's thinking because like

you know joe biden's wife

is apparently a doctor dr jill biden

the dog's thinking oh this is okay if i

kind of twist my leg get my leg caught

on a twist injure my hip she can come

take care of me but then he realizes

hold on a moment she's a doctor in

education she's bloody useless

do you think the white house has like a

veterinarian

you know how like the president has a

doctor do you think there's a white

house veterinarian

that'd be kind of a cool job well in

case you need to put

a dog which bites too many people down

well that

or if you think about it you know the

president has a doctor

right and he only has the president as

his client

if you're the white house vet then all

you have to do is take care of the white

house dog

like we should have went to vet school

well i can imagine biden's doctor's

pretty busy but over previous years i

mean

sure that would have been a bit of a

redundant position most of the year

well that's true trump didn't have a dog

did he uh he didn't

bring one to the white house with him

that's a shame

yeah you should have had something

different than a dog should have like a

bear or a manta shrimp or mantis shrimp

so

as we kind of expected the mantis shrimp

wraps himself

you know in some pretty cool areas

number one being one of our favorite

places the indian ocean oh

no kidding and we know why we like the

indian ocean because it's close to india

that's true that's true

our favorite people do you think that's

why they called it the indian ocean

no i think they caught the indian ocean

the indian ocean

first and then there's somebody found

this big plot of land next to it and

said what should we call that

and they were like how about ocean no

i've got a better idea

how about indian but now they've with

this we've got those issues with those

uh politically incorrect names over

there in north america

well maybe we should just take off the

end and just call it india

ah well that makes sense yeah it does

wait to hear my theory on why australia

is called australia oh no

yeah now the radio activity from

fukushima

might actually be leading to some

godzilla-sized

mantis shrimp oh please say this is true

please say this is true in the pacific

ocean area because it's been affecting a

lot of marine life

and so you know that's unfortunate i

feel sorry for the animals

well yeah unless it does create a huge

like 34 yard long mantis shrimp who

terrorizes uh

naval vessels and kind of yeah

what's that what's that uh the kraken

it'd be almost like the kraken yeah

right the kraken isn't a mana shrimp is

he

no he's got arms and stuff oh

i think he has more than the normal

amount of arms as well

what's the normal amount of arms for a

kraken uh

well now i mean more than the normal

number of arms like a human would have

so more than two yeah but maybe as many

as four oh but an octopus has eight

yeah so is he somewhere in between um

yeah but

the octopus generally isn't kidnapping

princesses

and tying them to rocks oh and waiting

for simbad or whoever it is to come

along and

yeah but octopuses are smart though they

are smart

yeah you know they have four brains

really yeah

how many does the mantis shrimp have i

don't know

but you can see cancer so right so one

of the

scientifically listed predators for the

mantis shrimp and i think they're kind

of clutching at straws here because i

actually read this

on a scientific blog it says

larger fish larger fish yeah that's one

of the predators fermented shrimp

larger fish that's not very scientific

it's not very scientific is it

something like we'd come up with yeah

did we come up with that well it might

been on wikipedia

oh it edited it one night when we

weren't yeah

yeah i i think you know you got to be

careful with wikipedia sometimes because

we do like to go on there and do our own

little edits whenever

we're not of sound mind and judgment so

that could have been one of those might

need to research that but i'm sure we're

going to forget to do that

well i don't think we need to go any uh

further into the whole predator thing

because if

larger fish are larger than larger fish

so the mantis shrimp is notorious for

his striking force as we knew

yes and he has the nickname the thumb

splitter due to the painful gashes they

can cause if

handled without care by humans that's

the best they could come up with

is the dumb splitter i'm guessing if he

was like kicking out with his legs and

splitting scrotums or breasts they might

have called him something else but

apparently most of the injuries

occur to the thumb when you're kind of

grabbing him and

you know yeah i just think they could

have come up with something better than

thumb

splitter yeah it's probably the same

person that wrote that blog post about

larger fish

that is some lazy writing that even for

our standards

that is some lazy writing right there

now whoever gave the manchester shrimp

the two different

types of claw they have they actually

came up with some cool names they came

up with spearers

or smashers those are the two types of

uh

manchester identify by the types of claw

they have and the

tactics they use to kill their prey

spearers

or smashers so which one's the cool one

well i'm guessing both of them well yeah

but one's got to be cooler than the

other well i mean that can't be equally

as cool well just invite both of them to

join the avengers and we'll see when the

next movie comes out which one of them

did the best job

well okay now hang on you're on to

something here if a spearer fights a

smasher who wins

i don't know can we not run some type of

computer program yeah what what's that

computer game where you can

simulate the battles no that's super

mario brothers

oh yeah yeah the what is it like the

ultimate battle simulator or something

like that you know where you can

put 10 000 ducks against

a thousand horses and it runs those

computer simulations have you not seen

this

no oh you need to look that up and we're

gonna so what's it called

i think it's battles yeah the the

ultimate battle simulator or

something like that there's youtube

videos all the time about

these things where you know you can put

like a

thousand jedi versus 20

000 roman soldiers and all kinds of

different stuff like that

i just wonder if the mantis shrimp is in

there then we could do our manta shrimp

versus honey badger

yeah i think if you kind of take the

spears and the smashes

to put it into superhero terms i think

it's kind of like

wolverine and thor well no no see you

missed out here it's gotta be hulk

for the smashers and it always hulk

smash isn't that what hawkey does

yeah but he's not he's not that smart

though is he where's thor's

bit brainy but i thought hulk was a

doctor

like a scientist oh he is when he's not

being the whole doctor bruce banner yeah

yeah so no i think thor is better

because the

mantis shrimp is actually pretty smart

yeah i'll go with that yeah i'll go with

that you know without going over

sensationalist about it

the spears they have spiny appendages

with barb

tips and they will actually stab

soft-bodied prey where the smashers

they've got club-like claws and they

bludgeon and smash their prey

to pieces wow and they do it so quickly

i remember you

showing me that video the other day

where a mantis shrimp

actually punched the water by a crab and

the force

generated in the water actually caused

the crabs shell to

fracture just from the force of the

water the mantis shrimp see

it just with that fact it is hard to

argue

that the mantis shrimp isn't like the

king of the ocean right

i mean there is nothing else out there

in the ocean that can do that

a whale-sized mantis shrimp i mean we'd

all be dead

yeah we'd all be dead well we'll

probably be all right here in land but

you know naval naval vessels would i

think about think about that though what

if

there's like big manta shrimp in

fukushima

and then the submarines are like driving

around underwater doing their thing

in a manta shrimp like some big manta

shrimp smacked the side of a submarine

and it just exploded

yeah and then it was full of nuclear

weapons and then that went off

now there's more nuclear waste and the

mantis shrimp get even bigger

well smash smashes can actually punch at

the same velocity

as a 22 caliber rifle wow right which

means they're automatically banned in

california and new york but

spring-loaded fists

they can accelerate at over 50 miles per

hour

which is like basically a molly whopping

or a haymaker as you like to call it yep

i will go with haymaker over molly

whopper yeah so uh here's one

and this is the most unbelievable fact i

think i've read about

any animal ever but their punch is so

fast it results in a process called

cavitation and creates these bubbles

which are superheated

and they have a small flash of light and

for a split second

it generates temperatures of 4400

degrees which is nearly as hot as the

sun

so they can heat water up all these

little bubbles these little cavitation

bubbles

to the heat of the sun so they can make

macaroni and cheese and like

two seconds yeah i didn't actually read

what the point of that was they can just

do it

yeah but i mean what the point of the

man of shrimp is to be a badass well

he's gone from like being either

wolverine or thor to now being

like one of the characters on mortal

kombat right yeah

yeah i mean it almost seems like magical

powers right

like these things shouldn't even exist

well i mean they can

crack and punch holes in aquarium glass

and they say if you are going to keep a

mantis shrimp make sure you have a

minimum of three quarters inch

three quarters of an inch glass

otherwise the mantis shrimp has been

known to

do you realize how expensive those

aquariums probably are

so that's already out of 15 from walmart

so still out of our price right now

yeah i think so but oh no well hold on

that's the uh

eighth of an inch plastic stuff that's

not yeah that's not the expensive glass

stuff

yeah so but yeah still out of our price

range

yeah now going back to the difference

between your eyes and the mantis shrimp

size

the eyes of a mantis shrimp have

trinocular vision

and it can actually gauge depth and

distance by focusing on objects with

three separate regions almost like the

iphone does with that major app yeah

except different right yeah

now i don't really know what it means

but i'm suspecting he can read a text on

the smaller version of the iwatch

without having to squint

yeah i i hate trying to read text

messages on the watch

it's just it's too hard well i now i got

the new one with that extra size screen

yeah 44 millimeters instead of 42 or was

it 42 instead of 40 i can't remember

anyway yeah it's so much bigger now it's

like a couple of millimeters bigger

yeah well we could all use an extra

couple of millimeters

yeah yeah a couple of thousand

millimeters maybe i don't know so some

manta shrimp

and monogamous so some of them have kind

of

so there's there's players and there's

haters yeah

right yeah so you got some yeah you got

some little players some that are haters

yeah

then you got the player haters yeah in

every species there's got to be some who

go

the better cup route on this one's you

know decided that instead of being able

to go out and mate with 20 or 30

different females

he's going to stay with the same partner

for 50 years

well yeah but could it be that there's

like ugly manta shrimp and good-looking

manta shrimp

well that's the personality that counts

wow with them wonder what kind of

personality they do have

i mean you know they gotta be walking

around with their chest puffed out

because they know they're tough

i think they've probably got a short

temper you'd have to

yeah all that power yeah i don't think

they have great responsibility

why are we making so many comic book

references neither one of us

read comic books i don't know so that

was just to let people know that the

mantis shrimp as great

as it is does have its flaws and the

female apparently

has a very um unusual method of deciding

what to do with its eggs

really it either carries them around

with her

or she just bears them those are the

only two options there's no kind of oh

bury some carry some see how it works

out see how many kind of get through to

hatching all that stuff

it's like so it's all or none yeah all

or nothing

really yeah see i'd do the half and half

method

just hedge my back that's right you know

it's hard enough to kind of get in the

head of human females without

get trying to get ahead of female mantis

shrimp right

yeah but you know it's kind of like when

you go to the horse track

you know you always throw two bucks on

the long shot because you know

if there's 13 races the odds of one of

those long shots hitting throughout the

day

are pretty good and that's gonna cover

all the other horrible bets that you

make

and you know all the money you lost not

really the same as a female mantis

shrimp bearing or eggs though is it

i think it's the exact same okay now

so we hope you learned some stuff about

the mantis shrimp

one thing we do want you to do is

seriously

go online and look up the manta shrimp

so you can see a picture of this sucker

yeah or oh there are some cool videos of

what these mana shrimp do

i mean they really are if we were smart

enough to be able to figure out if we

could actually

like post a picture on instagram of

amana shrimp

uh we'd probably do it but we haven't

figured out exactly how to do that

because we are so technically challenged

but

with all that being said thanks for

tuning in to this episode of the wolf

and the shepherd and we will catch you

on the next one