They are, weight for weight, probably the most formidable animals alive. A stomatopod, Nannosquilla decemspinosa , uses an active, wheel-like motion of its entire body to roll along beaches. It is the only macroscopic creature known that uses active wheel-like motions for locomotion. Stomatopod strikes are the one of the fastest known movements in the animal kingdom. Although existing in a medium significantly denser than air, their strikes are 10 times faster than those of the land-based Praying Mantis.
Stomatopods have the most sophisticated visual system in the world.
Stomatopods are the only invertebrates in which individual recognition has been strongly documented for non-mated individuals. This simply means that some stomatopods are capable of distinguishing one individual in the species from other individuals, and then act accordingly. Stomatopod communication has one of the fastest information transmission rates in the animal kingdom. Dr. Roy Caldwell notes that he has followed a monogamous pair of Lysiosquillina maculata for nearly 15 years. Stomatopods are widely-used as an effective way to measure the health of coral reefs .