When Ness and I first saw this video we though “no fucking way” because a) it’s too awesome to be real and b) it’s just crazy. But we Googled it and found out that it is, in fact, real.

National Geographic has this to say about the Pistol Shrimp:

When the claw snaps shut, a jet of water shoots out from a socket in the claw at speeds of up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) an hour, generating a low-pressure bubble in its wake. As the pressure stabilizes, the bubble collapses with a loud bang.

The whole process, which was recorded with the use of high-speed cameras and sound equipment, occurs within 300 microseconds.

Now, using a device that counts photons, Lohse and his colleagues recorded a flash of light that occurs when the bubble collapses.

The flashing phenomenon is thought to be similar to sonoluminescence, in which bubbles that are in a liquid driven by a strong sound field emit light. The researchers have dubbed the shrimp activity shrimpoluminescence.

In sonoluminescence, the peak intensity of the emitted light is at a short wavelength. This indicates that the temperature inside the bubble is at least 10,000 degrees Kelvin (18,000 degrees Fahrenheit).