Here’s an older video that our friends at Fish Gallery dug up and posted on their Facebook page. It’s a clip showing a stomatapod crustacean, otherwise known as a mantis shrimp, actually solving a Rubik’s Cube. Well, solving of the puzzle is implied with some extensive editing, but we’ll just say for the sake of the article that the shrimp “solved” it. We all know mantis shrimp to be curious creatures, and this particular shrimp is extremely fascinated with the puzzle. It carries the tricky device back to it’s burrow and eventually manipulates it to make all of the colors match all around. After tackling this feat, the shrimp discards the cube as if it were a dead shell cluttering up its burrow.
Now, I’m sure most of you are probably thinking this is fake, or at the very least assume that a person was involved in moving some of the colors into the right spot. Usually we would would be inclined to agree, after all the Rubik’s Cube isn’t an easy puzzle even for humans to solve, let alone a shrimp. However, the mantis shrimp is a very intelligent creature, as far as shrimp go. Scientists have been able to train them and teach them different tricks, so teaching them a complex series of steps to solve a Rubik’s Cube may not be so much of a stretch. Not to mention, the mantis shrimp has extremely complex and developed eyes, which allows them to see a wide variety of colors. So the thought of this shrimp solving this puzzle isn’t exactly as far fetched as one might think. But, we still have our doubts, especially since the shrimp seemed to lose interest in the Rubik’s Cube as soon as it was solved. The uploader of the video swears there was no human interaction, but who knows.
What’s your take? Real or Faked? Sound off in the comments section below.
