---
title: Tiger Pistol Shrimp (Alpheus bellulus)
scientific_name: Alpheus bellulus
common_name: Tiger Pistol Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-29T09:00:52.515Z
updated: 2026-08-12T22:29:24.763Z
tags: Tiger Pistol Shrimp, Alpheus bellulus, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/tiger-pistol-shrimp
---

# Tiger Pistol Shrimp (*Alpheus bellulus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-25 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Sand and rubble, in a burrow shared with a goby
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- banded orange-brown and white body with one enormously enlarged claw
- long antennae kept in contact with a goby standing guard at the burrow mouth
- constantly bulldozing sand out of the entrance
- length up to 5 cm

A banded shrimp the size of a thumb with one claw grown out of all proportion to the rest of it, working at the mouth of a burrow with a goby standing guard above. The claw is a weapon that never touches anything.

Snapping it shut fires a jet of water so fast that the pressure behind it drops below the vapor point and the water boils into a bubble, which then collapses - and the collapse, not the claw, is what does the damage. The bang is loud enough that colonies of these shrimp interfere with sonar, the flash of light released as the bubble implodes is hot enough to be measured in thousands of degrees, and the shock stuns small prey outright.

The rest of the animal is a bulldozer. It excavates and maintains a burrow for two, pushing loads of sand out with the claws, and it is nearly blind - hence the goby, which watches for predators while the shrimp works and keeps one of the shrimp's antennae in contact at all times.

A flick of the goby's tail sends both underground. Neither animal does well alone: the goby cannot dig, and the shrimp will not leave a burrow without a lookout.

## Also known as

- **English:** tiger pistol shrimp, tiger snapping shrimp
- **French:** Crevette-pistolet tigre
- **German:** Hübscher Knallkrebs, TigerKnallkrebs, Tiger-Pistolenkrebs
- **Spanish:** Camarón pistola tigre
- **Japanese:** ニシキテッポウエビ
- **DA:** tiger knipsereje

## Range

Central Kuroshio Current

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/tiger-pistol-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*