The smasher, which lives in cavities of rocks and corals, uses its calcified heel to supply its diet of rock oysters, clams, sea snails and crabs. Delivering underarm punches with its blunt, hammer-like elbow, it disables its prey with repeated blows before wedging the stunned victim against a wall and breaking open its shell. Fighting among stomatopods is a dangerous business, to be avoided - a single blow is sufficient to kill an enemy. Consequently, nature has provided the stomatopod with an eyespot on the inside of each raptorial claw as an aid to assessing the fighting ability of an opponent. When under threat from a rival, the claws are raised to the side, revealing the eyespots beneath the cloak in an impressive display.
Sex too is a battle.
The male makes the first move by probing each burrow, accepting rejection along the way with the occasional bash around the head, until he finds a potential mate and is allowed to enter the burrow. A ritualistic courtship of threat displays follows, until the male and female become conditioned to each other and eventually mate. Courtship lasts for a few days, when the female loses interest, and evicts the male from the burrow aggressively. In the next few days she lays eggs and then carries them for more than a month before the larvae hatch and swim away. These fascinating predators have survived for more than 200 million years, but some populations are now being reduced by trawl nets, which indiscriminately scrape the sea floor for fish.