Page 153 - (DK) Super Shark Encyclopedia: And Other Creatures of the Deep

MOBILE

NURSERY

BARREL SHRIMP

Here is a shrimp with a taste for flesh and a very
gruesome family life. Most animal mothers in the
open ocean scatter their eggs and leave it to chance
whether their babies survive. But the mother barrel
shrimp turns her prey into a stroller for her brood.
First she catches a plump little jelly called a salp. She
chomps away at its innards until the only thing left is
its barrel-shaped skin. Then she lays her eggs inside
this empty barrel and pushes it around wherever she
goes until they hatch.

AT A GLANCE

• SIZE ⁄16–1½ in (5–42 mm)
3
• HABITAT Deep sea
• LOCATION Worldwide

• DIET Salps (floating jellylike
animals) and other
soft-bodied animal plankton

STATS AND FACTS

TIME TAKEN
Barrel shrimp lay
their eggs in prey soft 5 min to enter prey
enough to scrape out.
Salps are favorite
10–60 min to eat insides of prey
targets, but sometimes
PUSHING ALONG they attack tiny jellyfish
and similar animals. BARREL LENGTH
A mother barrel shrimp keeps
a firm grip on the dead salp in 1 ⁄4 1 ⁄2 3 ⁄4 1
in which she has laid her eggs.
She propels her encased brood MAX. EGGS PER BROOD cm 1 2 3
around the ocean waters by 600 1 in/2.4 cm (average)
kicking with her strong back legs.

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