True Facts: The Remarkable Adaptations of Shrimp

This episode sponsored by NordVPN.

This right here

is a tiny little egg, and it's just about to hatch. Oop!

There it is.

What emerges is a nauplius or the larva of a shrimp.

Now, at this point, it doesn't really look like a shrimp, does it?

More like a painful hug.

But that's because it needs some time to grow.

As it grows, it molts.

It sheds its outside skeleton and grows a new one.

And in each molt, there's an opportunity to change things up a bit.

I mean, this is a much more radical puberty

than getting some hair on your pits.

But eventually they get their shrimp together and emerge as a juvenile.

Like all arthropods shrimps are made out of segments.

And each segment can come with its own pair of sticky outie things or appendages.

Now, this can be a fairly straightforward way to build a body.

Ask a centipede. Head. Body. Body. Body. Body. Butt.

But shrimps, which are decapods

along with lobsters and crabs had to go and make everything more complicated.

Everything's customized.

The segments all the way in the back have these fanny bits.

Jerry In the UK that means something different.

You know, potato, potato, tomato, vagina.

Anyway, the next set of segments have appendages called swimmerets.

They're quite cute.

Look like they could give a good tickle.

well, that's some haughty swimming right there, isn't it?

Look, I'm at my fancy antenna.

I mean, you better have ended world hunger if you're going to swim like that.

That's bullsh*t.

Now the next five segments have pairs of legs on them, which is a good thing

because decapod means ten legged and it’d be a shame to f*** that up.

It's not always easy to make them out and it's a bit of a jumbled mess.

Looks like a man in a trenchcoat trying to smuggle a bunch of phone cords.

Anyway, after that clusterf***,

you have three more pairs of appendages up front that help with the eating.

The two pairs right next to the mouth are often quite small.

Sort of a cross between a

mustache and fingers that help cram stuff into their mouth hole.

But this third pair here is more like a pair of arms,

and they can often get quite long.

And what's at the very end of it will often be modified depending

on what they eat.

You got good old pincers, for example.

They're good for grabbing random crap off the floor.

And by crap, I mean crap.

Or maybe you want to hold onto a fish that you're eating a** first.

Whatever.

Just bring it back to your mustache fingers and bon appetit.

But one of the cool

things about living in water is there's food just floating around you.

You know, when you try to catch a snowflake on your tongue, it's like that.

But with rotting flesh, clam sperm and fish feces.

Now, some shrimp got wise to that opportunity,

and they swapped their pincers for whatever those are.

Maybe a floppy spork or Venus fly hands.

The bamboo shrimp really went for it.

Just sits back and then shloomp.

I mean, that's how you lick the Cheetos, dust off your fingers right there.

A bit lazy, but no judgment. Shloomp.

Except for the part when I said they were lazy.

Lindomysis benedeni, which is an amazing name, has a more active pigpen approach.

Instead of waiting for stuff to float by...

They sort of run in place with their little swimmerets.

Sort of looks like if they didn't hold

on, they'd shoot forward like in the cartoon.

Anyway, this all kicks up a cloud of detritus, which is

then funneled in the general direction of their mouths.

Oops. Missed a bit there. Shloomp.

Now, the harlequin shrimp wasn't into all this zippy

dee doo nonsense, and it decided to go for larger prey.

Now, first off, they do look crazy.

It's like looking into the trash after a balloon animal birthday party.

But if you can figure out what's what,

you can see that the arm thing they have ends in almost a spatula shape.

I know what you're thinking. Oh, it's like a spoon.

Finally, something appropriate for the soup of the ocean.

A bit flat, but certainly more civilized.

Wrong. These are spatulas of death.

You see, Harlequin shrimp are hunters, and what they hunt are starfish.

And those be-spatula’ed hands are just right for flipping them over

like some ornamental pancake you might make for a picky child.

Look at that. That's teamwork right there.

Of course, the starfish is like with all the things I have to worry about.

I've got a pair of psycho clowns trying to flip my sh** over.

And you know what the shrimp do when they flip that starfish over?

Yeah, they eat their feet.

And I'm not talking about some fetish thing either.

Like, they actually eat their feet because some shrimps are crazy like that.

I mean, look at this one. It's eviscerating that fish.

I bet you didn't know your peel n’ eat buffet did that sort of thing.

And it gets worse.

Look at that.

It takes another fish out of the first fish's stomach.

Should have left it in. Be like an underwater turducken.

But there are plenty of shrimp that foster much healthier relationships.

This shrimp right here is Lysmata amboinensis.

It's one of a number of species referred to as cleaner shrimp.

And you can see that it's comfortable getting into a hole that many creatures

would spend a lot of energy trying to stay out of.

Now, it's known that shrimp are delicious.

So whatever they’re doing in there has to be better than eating one.

From the shrimp's point of view, of course, they're not cleaning anything.

They just happen to like, eating at a very specific sort of restaurant,

one that serves up dead skin and parasites.

And luckily for these cleaner shrimp, anyway, there's a lot of parasites

down there.

I mean, it's a big enough problem that these shrimp don't

even have to go out and find the fish.

The fish come to them.

They set up shop somewhere and then they do this little dance.

You know, like the people that flip those signs around for a car wash.

And it's essentially a way to flag down the itchy fishes.

I know what you're saying.

I wouldn't want to shrimp in my orifice.

Well, you probably haven't had leeches.

I mean, look at this poor bastard. He's covered in them.

I don't know if you really need the arrows to point it out, but for a shrimp,

I mean, that's like coming across a tray of shoestring potato fries.

They just wiggle a bit when you bite into them.

And then you have smaller things like ciliated protozoans

that bury themselves right into fish flesh.

And, you know it's satisfying to dig one of those out.

It's like getting the meat out of a pistachio nut.

Or tongue popping the bean out the pod of a salted edamame.

You know what I'm saying.

And listen,

if you got yourself a case of the parasites,

you can look a bit ridden hard and put away wet.

All right. Fish are always wet, but even wetter.

But look at that. After a shrimp

takes a turn eating straight from your body., you’re as good as new.

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Where were we? Oh right.

The relationships that shrimps have with other animals aren't all just short

term and transactional.

They can commit.

Emperor shrimp get cozy with sea cucumbers,

and seem to use them for transportation because they’re lazy little...

f**ks.

Look at that.

Hanging off the side like it's a Mardi Gras float.

Not exactly the express train either, but it does have a fancy dining cart.

In spawning season, sea cucumbers will let loose their ejaculate into the water,

as is the custom.

And the emperor shrimps live out

some decadent fantasy of bathing in and eating from a geyser of caviar.

And of course, the benefit for the sea cucumber is: it gets to watch.

A number of shrimp get into long term relationships

with different sorts of coral.

And that's cool because coral can grab food

right out the water with their little polyp fingers,

and then the shrimp can just walk over and take it.

And what's the coral going to do?

Make a little fist?

Why I outta...

And sometimes these relationships go on for a very long time,

and they start finishing each other's sentences and wearing each other's clothes

until it's hard to tell them apart.

You know, like Alcyonohippolyte commensalis and Xenia coral.

Periclimenes amboinensis might as well be a crinoid, for crinoid loud.

That's a deep, dad joke.

Those Harlequin shrimp - I bet you were wondering

- blend into f***ing nothing, because nothing else wants to look like that.

These squat shrimps here don't just stop at looking the part....

They do a bit of method acting.

I mean, there’s see-through ones.

There's ones that are sort of see-through.

Hippolyte varians

comes in two colors each for blending into a different sort of sea grass.

But each of those has the ability to change into the other color.

Butt blending is... Sorry.

But blending in is just one way to get some extra protection.

Periclimenes yucatanicus repeatedly touches the stinging arms

of the anemone until it builds up resistance to the poison.

And after that, it's got a home base that most things aren't keen

on getting too close to.

And of course, you can always find yourself a hidey hole or build one.

A number of shrimp in the genus Alpheus shack up with the goby fish.

The shrimp is in charge of all tunnel related activities: building it,

maintaining it.

While the goby, which has much better eyesight, is on watch duty.

Sure, sometimes having roommates gets a bit awkward.

Sort of a third wheel situation, but they figured out how to make it work.

But don't start thinking

that these shrimps can't fend for themselves in a pinch or snap...

...really. You'll see.

The common names for these shrimps in the family Alpheidae

are pistol shrimps or snapping shrimps.

And to be honest, what they can do

is somewhere between a shot and a West Side Story snap.

They have this one enlarged claw with special modifications.

The top part of the claw has a piece on it that fits into a hollowed-out socket

on the bottom part.

Using a latch, they can build up tension on that joint

so much that the skeleton itself deforms and then snap!

As it closes...

jet of water shoots out, the water

it pushes through creates a swirling pattern, almost like a smoke ring.

They're called vortex rings.

For a teensy moment in the middle of these rings, an area

of incredibly low pressure forms in what's called a cavitation bubble.

It's basically a bubble inside of which there isn't really any liquid water.

And in an instant, the whole thing

collapses as water from all sides rushes in to fill the void.

This collapse creates a shockwave of high pressure that can stun

or even kill another shrimp.

That shockwave goes in all directions.

So to protect themselves, these shrimp have a sort of helmet.

There's a layer of water between the outside of their noggin

and their brain.

When the shock hits, water is expelled out, buffering some of the blow.

And it's not just for fighting and hunting either.

They do this snap thing to communicate and it's freaking loud.

These here are snapping shrimp in the genus Synalpheus.

I mean, look at that big a** claw.

They live inside sponges and you can see, sorry, hear: they make a ruckus.

Now, what's interesting about Synalpheus is that they’re eusocial.

That's right, Jerry.

It would be a good name for a social network.

I mean, if they still existed

and we weren't sucking off the ubiquitous teat of the algorithm.

Sorry.

These shrimps are eusocial like bees and ants with workers and queens.

And they're the only underwater animal to do that.

Now, there's another sort of shrimp

that likes to live in sponges, and it's a different kind of sponge, too.

These are glass sponges.

Their skeletons are made from these intricate lattices of silica.

This one right here is called a Venus flower basket.

And the amazing thing is that nearly every single one of these

has a male and female shrimp living inside of them.

Look at that.

You can see one of the claws right there.

These shrimp swim into the sponge when they're small enough

to fit through those little holes.

But at some point they grow too big to get out again.

Apparently there's enough to eat in there and then they get bored

and make some bebes.

They leave, right, because they can.

And then it's just the two of them, you know, waiting to die.

I mean, it's almost like marriage, except...

well, it's like marriage.

He's like, “Look, honey, they've come to save us.

We don't go if there's only room for one, just take me...

“No, sorry, honey. I didn't mean it.”

No, we didn't forget mantis shrimp, Jerry.

We're just not doing them well because they're not friggin shrimp.

They're not even decapods. Well, I know they're called shrimp.

This one's called the peacock mantis shrimp.

Three things it isn't.

Apparently, you can call whatever you want to shrimp.

Look at this. They call this a clam shrimp.

If it was actually those things, you'd be halfway to a paella.

I mean, some of the ones we showed aren't even true shrimp.

But who puts the word “true” in front of something to add some sort of authority?

Don't get me started on prawns.

They're shrimp. Big shrimp.

British need a different word for everything.

It probably means vagina.

It's true, Jerry.

Half the words in the British dictionary mean vagina.

What do you think “cup of tea” means?

That's why they’re always on about it.

Nobody could drink that much tea.