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Thanks to Zachary and Anbo for their suggestions this week! Let's learn about some shrimp!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nThis is why the pistol shrimp is immune to its own powerful shock waves\n\nThe Symbiotic Relationship Between Gobies and Pistol Shrimp\n\nAn eastern ghost shrimp:\n\n\n\nA snapping shrimp:\n\n\n\nA goby fish and its snapping shrimp buddy:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to have an episode about a few different types of shrimp, with suggestions from Zachary and Ambo.\n\nLet\u2019s start with the ghost shrimp, since Zachary recently got an aquarium and has some ghost shrimp in it.\n\nThe name ghost shrimp refers to various species of freshwater shrimp in the genus Palaemon. One of the most popular species to keep as a pet is Palaemonetes paludosus. It\u2019s sometimes called the glass shrimp since it\u2019s mostly transparent, or the eastern ghost shrimp.\n\nThe eastern ghost shrimp can grow up to about an inch long, or 2.5 cm. It\u2019s native to the southeastern United States, mostly east of the Appalachian Mountains, where it lives in lakes and eats plankton.\n\nEven though the eastern ghost shrimp is mostly transparent, it can actually change its color to blend in with its background. Only one other species of ghost shrimp is known to do this, a very similar species that is only found in the Mississippi River.\n\nThere are dozens of species of ghost shrimp, though, and they live throughout the world. Some species are freshwater, others are marine. Most are at least partially transparent and rarely grow more than two inches long, or maybe 5 cm at most. In some cases people catch them to eat, although more often they\u2019re caught to use as bait or fish food, and of course they\u2019re eaten by a whole lot of wild animals.\n\nWe actually don\u2019t know a whole lot about many species of ghost shrimp. Some have only recently been discovered, and some are endangered. For instance, the Florida cave shrimp is only found in a single sinkhole near Gainesville, Florida. It\u2019s the only known species of ghost shrimp that lives in a cave, and it\u2019s closely related to the eastern ghost shrimp.\n\nThe Florida cave shrimp grows a little over one inch long, or about 3 cm. It has eyes but doesn\u2019t need them, so they don\u2019t work anymore. It\u2019s mostly transparent with some white spots. It was discovered in 1953 during a scientific exploration of a sinkhole in the Squirrel Chimney Cave and hasn\u2019t been seen since 1973. It may even be extinct by now, but further explorations of the sinkhole have revealed that it connects with a much larger underwater cave system. Hopefully the little shrimp lives within this cave system, but it hasn\u2019t been found anywhere else so far and we know almost nothing about it.\n\nThat\u2019s pretty much all there is to know about the ghost shrimp, so congratulations to Zachary for keeping a mysterious little friend in your aquarium.\n\nNext, Anbo wanted to learn about snapping shrimp. (Anbo also wanted to learn about the mantis shrimp, but it turns out that the mantis shrimp isn\u2019t actually a shrimp, or a mantis, and it deserves its own episode one day.) We talked about the snapping shrimp before in episode 273, but there\u2019s definitely more to learn about it. There are a whole lot of species--like, more than a thousand. They\u2019re especially common in coral reefs and live in colonies that communicate with each other by snapping their claws. The sound is so loud that it can sound like a gunshot, which is why it\u2019s sometimes called the pistol shrimp.\n\nThe snapping shrimp is about the same size as the ghost shrimp, about 2 inches long at most, or 5 cm. One of its claws is ordinary, but the other claw is much bigger, and it\u2019s the large claw that makes the snapping sound. As we discussed in episode 273, the snapping shrimp will hide in a burrow or rock crevice with its antennae sticking out, and when a small animal like a fish happens by,