Mantis Shrimp Strike Harder as They Age — and Only Scientists Know Why That's Remarkable

Scientists tracked mantis shrimp strike force from youth to adulthood — and found females eventually hit far harder than males. The mystery of why reveals something profound about biology.

Mantis shrimp are already extraordinary animals by any standard: their compound eyes contain 16 types of photoreceptors (humans have three), they can see ultraviolet and infrared light, and they strike with appendages that move at approximately 23 metres per second — fast enough to generate cavitation bubbles in water whose collapse creates temperatures briefly comparable to the surface of the sun. They have been the subject of consistent scientific fascination for decades because almost every aspect of their biology exceeds conventional expectations.

The new research tracked in the April 1, 2026 issue of Science News adds a developmental dimension to this already remarkable picture. Scientists tracked the strike force that mantis shrimp generate from juvenile through adult stages, measuring the impact force produced by the striking appendages — called dactyl clubs — as the animals grew. The findings reveal a developmental pattern whose simplest description is counterintuitive: female mantis shrimp, which are typically smaller than males as adults, eventually generate significantly higher strike forces than comparable-aged males.

This sex-specific developmental trajectory in strike force — larger-bodied males producing less force than smaller-bodied females in the mature adult stage — is unusual enough in biology to demand explanation. The researchers who conducted the study describe the finding as a mystery whose resolution requires understanding something specific about how the two sexes' dactyl clubs are structured and how those structures change with age.

Preliminary analysis suggests that the female dactyl club's internal architecture — the specific arrangement of mineralised fibres whose design distributes impact stress — changes with age in ways that the male's does not. If this structural development is confirmed, it suggests that female mantis shrimp are investing differently in striking capability over their life course, possibly reflecting different behavioural needs around territory defense, prey capture, or competition for mates.

For materials science — where mantis shrimp dactyl club architecture has already inspired impact-resistant composite material designs — the developmental dimension opens additional design possibilities.