Internal Anatomy

The mouth of a mantis shrimp opens directly into a large stomach that fills the anterior cephalothorax (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). They have a huge digestive cecum which continues throughout the body, even into the telson (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). Their heart is made up of a long tube which runs through the length of the body, with thirteen pairs of ostia (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). They possess a hemal system with sophisticated arteries and capillaries (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). Adults have a pair of maxillary glands (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). Their nervous system includes a typical tripartite crustacean brain, a pair of lengthy circumenteric connectives, and a subesophageal ganglion encompassing the ganglia of the head and the first five thoracopods (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004). The remaining appendages are operated by the segmental ganglia of the ventral nerve cord (Ruppert, Fox & Barnes 2004).