Shrimps
are no ordinary creatures! Why? Because they are awesome!
The
method which they adopt to kill smaller creatures is no boring old
catch-rip-consume, but is something you never dreamed of!
Read
on to know more!
Snapping shrimp produce a
loud crackling noise so intense that it disturbs underwater communication. It
originates from the violent collapse of a large cavitation bubble generated
under the tensile forces of a high-velocity water jet formed each time a
shrimp's snapper claw snaps shut.
Here we report the experimental observation of a short
intense flash of light emitted at bubble collapse. In light of the apparent
similarity with sonoluminescence, we term this phenomenon shrimpoluminescence.
The flash duration is extremely short, shorter than 10 ns. The total number of
photons emitted from the hot bubble interior amounts up to 5^104 photons,
which is typically one to two orders of magnitude less than sonoluminescence
from a single collapsing bubble. Shrimpoluminescence can
therefore not be detected with the naked eye.
The light emission at
bubble collapse may not be of biological significance, but rather represents a
by-product of the bubble collapse, whose shock wave is utilized to stun or even
kill prey animals. Nevertheless, the light emission highlights the extreme
conditions in the hot bubble interior at collapse and therefore the violence of
the event.
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