# Interesting and Amazing Facts About the Animal Kingdom

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-and-amazing-facts-about-the-animal-kingdom/664323>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [July 23, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-and-amazing-facts-about-the-animal-kingdom/664323 "2013-07-23T20:42:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-and-amazing-facts-about-the-animal-kingdom/664323/1 "2013-07-23T20:42:57Z")

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I love the weirdness and the incredible evolution has created amongst the wide expanse of the animal kingdom. For example,

Lobsters don’t age, in the sense that they don’t experience any change in metabolism or other functions as they get older. A one-hundred year old lobster will eat, copulate pretty much the same way as a 10 year old. They just continue to get bigger. They never die of old age.

The pistol shrimp has a claw that is about half the size of their bodies and they snap it shut it to create a sound explosion, 218 decibels and burst of water at 60 mph, that decimates their prey. It is so fast and so violent that it cause a cavitation bubble that literally implodes with a flash of light and reaches 5,000 degrees kelvin.

What ya got, I want to hear about the amazing animal kingdom.

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**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-and-amazing-facts-about-the-animal-kingdom/664323/2 "2013-07-23T21:44:48Z")

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> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#):
>
> The pistol shrimp has a claw that is about half the size of their bodies and they snap it shut it to create a sound explosion, 218 decibels and burst of water at 60 mph, that decimates their prey. It is so fast and so violent that it cause a cavitation bubble that literally implodes with a flash of light and reaches 5,000 degrees kelvin.

I raise you [mantis shrimp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp). Similar badass claws that create cavitation and that can break aquariums, a taste for murder (see youtube), the coolest eyes in the animal kingdom, some are quite pretty, and supposedly the only animal to use a hyperbolic paraboloid (Pringles-shaped) as a spring (double check that).

Also, they’re bigger liars, since the pistol shrimp is at least a true shrimp. MS are their own class.

ETA: TED agrees with that, and they’re an okay cite. MS are unique.