Pistol Shrimp VIDEO Gives Slo-Mo Look At Fast-Closing Claw

Fire in the hole!

“This guy’s pretty tiny, but he’s got one of the most awesome weapons in the animal kingdom,” Sam Hume from BBC Earth Production's "Earth Unplugged" says of the "pistol shrimp" in the video above.

The shrimp uses one oversized claw like a stun gun. The claw snaps shut as fast as 62 mph to stun or kill prey, according to an article in the September 2000 issue of Science.

How fast is that? Fast enough to "rip water apart," send pebbles flying, and raise the temperature in the surrounding water to 5,000 to 10,000 Kelvin -- that's hotter than the surface of the sun, according to Hume. The snapping claw creates an air bubble, and when water rushes back into the void there's a loud popping noise.

Luckily, the Earth Unplugged guys were able to capture the snapping in slow-mo at an astounding rate of 10,000 frames per second.