It would also be good to note that these aren't shrimp. They're amphipods; a very diverse group in their own right. Crustaceans, but more closely related to krill.

Veined Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus
I don't know about the two shell thing, but I've seen octopuses in single coconut shells before.
Here is the paper:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2809%2901914-9

The "tool use" argument hinges on the definition including items that are carried for use later on being tools. This is why the authors claim that hermit crabs aren't using tools.. because their shells always afford some protection. Of course, octopuses carry rocks to their dens and use them as doors... as do some crustaceans. It's a neat behaviour, but "tool use" comes off as kind of gimmicky.

>> ^cybrbeast:
>> ^Maze:
I was expecting some awesome killer strike footage or somethin'. What a tease.

Here you go: Mantis Shrimp bludgeons crab apart


Woo! Cheers.

Also take a look at Crustacean Wars I where this Mantis casually batters a snail.

>> ^Maze:
I was expecting some awesome killer strike footage or somethin'. What a tease.

Here you go: Mantis Shrimp bludgeons crab apart

Don't ban this member! It's my grandma-ma. She doesn't know what she's saying! She thinks she's still 29 and all she ever does is copy-paste ads from her internet shopping sprees. She can't help it. She lives in some twisted, anachronistic past akin to Norma Desmond.

I ask, "Grandma-ma, why do you keep buying all this replica Tiffanys crap?" And she replies, "Dahling, it's to impress the suitors." But, grandma-ma," I says, "There are no more suitors."

To which she starts babbling about her fair Ulysses being gone so long that she became a dried up, crustacean of a woman -- her only lucid moment, despite it being entrenched in epic poetic nonsense. Honestly, though, I wish I could remember half the things she utters. It's quite mad, really -- and by mad, I mean, maddeningly hilarious -- in an endearing sort of way.

I wish you all knew how unrepresentative of herself her past 3 comments have been. Really, I just adore the woman. I adore her so much, sometimes I wear a wig fashioned after her own liceless head of hair. And I like to carry around a knife when I do this -- because when I was young, she loved cooking. I'd help her chop up onions and celery to serve the guests at the motel she runs -- sorry, ran. Since descending into her strange state, she hasn't had time to run things, so I do all that now. I'm what you call a real handy man -- fixing the televisions, talking to our vulnerable, feminine guests, and cleaning the pools...

oh yes, always, always cleaning the pools.

Drax! Thank God someone else gets it! That show really was the best! There's a whole series of novels, including what the fifth season was supposed to be. Frigging heart wrenching. Okay, Notarobot. You know how on Star Trek, they encounter some Klingons in some uncharted territory, and the whole episode is really tense, and then they find some key at the last minute, and then everyone goes home and noone dies? That doesn't happen on Bab5. Instead of dink and dunk episode plots, the story arcs take entire seasons to develop, but when they get it on, whole fleets, casualties in the thousands. Body parts and debris floating through space. Entire friggin planets, decimated. In Star Trek, nobody dies. In Bab5, everyone in clinging by their bloody fingernails and the skin of their teeth the whole time.
With the high hair Centauri and the red eye Narn, from what I recall the Narn were an intelligent, but semi developed culture until the Centauri came along, hooked them up with some interstellar technology, gave them the smallpox blankets and slavery treatment, and the whole thing degenerated in to an orgy of slaugher. The guy ol whatshisname (high hair guy in the clip there was the nerd in Animal House) answers to is one of my all time favorite characters in anything: Ambassador Londo Mollari, who is a backstabbing Machivellian scumbag diplomat (who just so happens to have a tiny glimmer of a conscience that utterly rips him to shreds). Crap, one station cancelled it halfway through, and they managed to pick up with another, so the whole time their telling this GENIUS story, they're putting 75% of their effort into just surviving their own executives, so at a glance it's easy to laugh at the hair, and the already Ed Wood looking tech and all, BUT DON'T LET THAT FOOL YOU. Rather than either trying to start from season one, or not watching any of it, I suggest watching season 3, (SPOILER HERE!!!) which is civil war with Earth (and Earth's $%&%$^ douchebag dictator), and you'll be hooked well enought not only to sustain all five seasons, but hunt down the novels afterward. Bab 5 is better than the total sum of all Star Treks and Battlestars put together. I love this show and I'm not even into the genre! Bab 5 really is as f-ing awesome as great stories get. (There's even a hot crustacean lady played by the gal who plays Rousseau in Lost). Drax, you posted this? I love you!
Hey. Londo's in that clip down there, G'Kar's epiphany.
Also! One of my all time favorite quotes is from this show: "The avalanche has already begun. it is too late for the snowflakes to vote." -Ambassador Kosh

When crab world domination comes (and it WILL, I assure you), this is the type of machine they will build to amuse themselves. Crustacean bastards.

scientists discovered recently that crustaceans such as lobsters and prawns actually feel pain. so it's entirely possible we might find out that fish do too.

I'm reminded of the "Hogzilla" that was killed in Alabama and feel a similar way about this lobster. Animals like this that have lived, seemingly, far beyond their natural lifespans, and grown far larger than we are accustomed to should be researched, not destroyed.

I felt a certain frustration seeing the corpse of Hogzilla. That animal was a rare and magnificent find, and should have been tagged and allowed to continue living, instead of being turned into meat paste. Similarly, the lobster, if tended to appropriately, could allow us to understand more about the lifecycles of crustaceans and how it was this one lived so long, and grew so big.

It's like a light-version of finding a sasquatch or yeti and killing it "just because it was there" as if it was not deserving of being studied, humanely, first.

Funny how I found myself rooting for the cat and wanting to see it swat the little crustacean off the mat. Even though the cat was clearly the aggressor...

Just biased toward my own phylum I guess.

Strangely enough, we (meaning humanity) have just figured this out for ourselves... in our usual extreme style: http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/0400302.Taleyarkhan.fusion.html

I'm blown away by the fact that this crustacean has beaten us to this discovery but I'll give us humans the props for taking it to the level we have... that is, nuclear fusion in a bubble. woot.

Reminds me of an episode of futurama, where Zoidberg expresses the freedom of speech, by eating the Earthican flag. Needless to say, there are no applause for that particular crustacean. P&T makes a good point though, as Dr. Zoidberg also did.