Squilla, Mantis Shrimp, Lai Liu Haar

I'd been interested in eating these for over one year (saw them on T.V.), and finally got a chance in Ipoh.

In Cantonese "Lai Liu Haar" means "Pissing Prawn". They're longer than normal prawns, and they squirt some sort of liquid when you lift them out of the water. They also don't have the expected pincer claws... instead they have articulating arm jaws like the insect "Mantis", hence the name.

Here they are on death row...


Here they are on my plate...

They're very big, and reasonably tasty. More like a lobster than a prawn.

I found their third name "Squilla" on the web, and their wikipedia entry here.

They sound pretty intense:

...strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their raptorial claws at the prey, and are capable of inflicting serious damage on victims significantly greater in size than themselves. In smashers, these two weapons are employed with blinding quickness, with an acceleration of 10,400 g and speeds of 23 m/s from a standing start. Because they strike so rapidly, they generate cavitation bubbles between the appendage and the striking surface. The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produce measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of 1,500 N that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface, which means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the even bigger force from the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follows. ...

Here's a Lai Liu Haar bashing the shit out of a crab. You can see it crack the crab's claw near the end.


These things are the Spartans of the sea.