The bright orange fist-like club of this underwater beauty accelerates underwater faster than a 22-caliber bullet. Ed Yong describes its power further in Discover:

As the club unfurls, its acceleration is 10,000 times greater than gravity. Moving through water, it reaches a top speed of 50 miles per hour.

Kisailus and his colleagues wondered what makes these clubs so strong? Essentially, how does something withstand 50,000 bullet impacts?

With microscopes and x-rays, the team found that the club is a highly complex structure, composed of three specialized regions that work together to create a structure tougher than many engineered ceramics.

The first region, located at the impacting surface of the club, contains a high concentration of the hydroxylapatite mineral, similar to that found in human bone, which supports the impact when the mantis shrimp strikes prey. Further inside, highly organized and rotated layers of chitin (a complex sugar) fibers dispersed in the mineral act as a shock absorber, absorbing energy as stress waves pass through the club. Finally, the club is encapsulated on its sides by oriented chitin fibers, which wrap around the club, keeping it intact during these high velocity impacts.

“This club is stiff, yet it’s light-weight and tough, making it incredibly impact tolerant and interestingly, shock resistant,” Kisailus says. “That’s the holy grail for materials engineers.”

Kisailus says the potential applications in structural materials are widespread because the final product could be lighter weight and more impact resistant than existing products—improving electric cars and airline fuel efficiency.

Kisailus is primarily focused on improving military body armor, which can add 30 pounds to a service member’s load. His goal is to develop a material that is one-third the weight and thickness of existing body armor.

ScienceNOW reports that:

Kisailus and colleagues are already developing materials that mimic the structure of the mantis shrimp’s club, and preliminary tests show the materials are bulletproof, he says.

ScienceNOW also has a video of this tough creature pounding its prey here. You can also check out a live peacock mantis shrimp in our Water Planet exhibit here at the Academy.

Image: Prilfish/Flickr

The Riverside flies are not alone. Scientists have known about flies’ love of beer since the 1920s. But Anupama Dahanukar, an entomologist at UC Riverside, wanted to know why so she headed to the lab.

She and her colleagues examined the feeding preference of the common fruit fly for the pale ale (the least sweet beer) and other products of yeast fermentation. They found that a receptor (a protein that serves as a gatekeeper) associated with neurons located in the fly’s mouth-parts is instrumental in signaling a good taste for beer.

The receptor in question is Gr64e.  When a fly settles on beer, Gr64e detects glycerol and transmits this information to the fly’s neurons, which then influences the fly’s behavioral response.

Once the group identified the receptor, NPR reports,

Dahanukar and [colleague Zev] Wisotsky even found the particular gene responsible for flies’ ability to detect glycerol. When they created flies missing that gene, and gave them the sugar water-beer choice, the flies went for the sugar water.

“Taste becomes important only after the fly makes physical contact with food,” says Dahanukar. “A fly first locates food sources using its odor receptors—crucial for its long-range attraction to food. Then, after landing on food, the fly uses its taste system to sample the food for suitability in terms of nutrition and toxicity.”

As often happens in science, Dahanukar’s discovery has left her with more questions than when she started this research. Her lab will work to answer them.]

“How do you get information from the chemical environment to the brain—not just in flies but other insects as well?” Dahanukar asks. “How is that information processed to give rise to appropriate behavior? How does feeding behavior change with hunger? These are some questions we would like to pursue.”

The research was published earlier this month in Nature Neuroscience.

Image: UCR Strategic Communications