mantis-shrimp

As the familiar name implies, the mantis-shrimp has a feature in common with a popular insect — the praying mantis, flycatcher and voracious feeder, which has been known to seize and eat a small frog.

Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

A tender-hearted mollusc (PINNA) accepts the company of a beautiful form of mantis-shrimp — tender, delicate and affectionate — which dies quickly when removed from its asylum, as well as a singular creature which has no charm of character, and must be the dullest sort of lodger possible to imagine.

The Confessions of a Beachcomber 2003

We found lobsters among the rocks, too, and on some beaches a strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti _varo_, a kind of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede.

White Shadows in the South Seas Frederick O'Brien 1900

A tender-hearted mollusc (PINNA) accepts the company of a beautiful form of mantis-shrimp -- tender, delicate and affectionate -- which dies quickly when removed from its asylum, as well as a singular creature which has no charm of character, and must be the dullest sort of lodger possible to imagine.

Confessions of a Beachcomber 1887

I have pondered as to this habit of the varo, and have tried to persuade me that the male, being a courteous shrimp, -- he is a kind of mantis-shrimp, -- combats the intruding hooks first in order to protect his loved one; but the grapnel is baited with fish, and though masculine pride would insist that chivalry urges varo homme to defend his domestic shrine, fishers for the tidbit say that he is after the bait, and holds to it so tightly that he sacrifices his life.

Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Frederick O'Brien 1900