Some people are obsessed with sports and finding out whether their favorite team won this week’s game, others are obsessed with television and finding out what the Kardashian's are up to this week. Some are obsessed with choosing a career and finding their path in life, while others are obsessed with finding that special someone and settling down.

Personally, I’m not obsessed with any of these things. I’m obsessed with the mantis shrimp.

For all of you poor, horribly uninformed souls out there who have no idea what I am talking about, the mantis shrimp is basically the coolest type of shrimp in the sea. It’s not just any shrimp, it’s the mantis shrimp. I could go on and on for hours about why the mantis shrimp is so amazing and so much better and more interesting than any other type of mantis or shrimp, but I’ll try to keep it short and simple.

Mantis shrimp have incredibly powerful claws that help them rip into their prey with ease as they scavenge upon the dark depths of the ocean floor, but that’s not even the best thing about them. The best part about the mantis shrimp is that it basically has the most elaborate visual system of any creature ever discovered.

I won’t go too greatly into the science behind their visual structure, even though I am obviously a devoted expert on all things mantis shrimp. Basically, us humans have three types of color-receptive cones in our eyes that allow us to see color. All of the colors we can see are all due to these color-receptors. The more color-receptive cones a species has, the more color it can see, so species with more of them perceive a much more colorful world. Humans have three. The mantis shrimp has 16.

I know, I know. You must be falling over in your chair right now, gasping for breath as you try to come to terms with the fact that you lived this many years of your life without knowing about the mantis shrimp and its 16 color-receptive cones. I remember how I first felt when I discovered it. Your life suddenly separates into the pre-mantis shrimp era and the post-mantis shrimp era. Nothing will ever be the same again. All you can do now is move forward, with the mantis shrimp by your side of course.

The mantis shrimp’s 16 color-receptive cones allow it to see a world of color that is unimaginable to us humans. We don’t completely understand it, so we can only imagine the millions of colors that mantis shrimp can see that we will never be able to. Their visible spectrum of light surpasses human capacity in every conceivable way. I think it has pretty much been agreed upon by now that being a human is simply awful, and now this confirms it once and for all.

On the bright side, maybe we can use our lack of color-receptive cones as an excuse to justify some of the more negative aspects of human behavior. Whenever we mess up or act selfishly or maliciously, maybe we can just say that it’s because we lack the color-receptive cones to know better, and then we can move on and try to act more like the mantis shrimp in the future.

In my opinion, we could all learn something from the mantis shrimp. We can learn to see the world clearly and stop acting blind to the feelings of those around us. The mantis shrimp does not have this problem, and how could it with 16 different color-receptive cones? SIXTEEN! Wow, it still gets my heart racing every time I say it.

I am soon planning to start a local church that worships the mantis shrimp. It may not be a formal church exactly, probably more of just a safe place where local mantis shrimp enthusiasts can come together, sing mantis shrimp worship songs and have discussions about the mantis shrimp, what it means to them, how it has affected their lives, typical mantis shrimp talk basically.

The human race will always be lagging behind that of the mantis shrimp. Thirteen color-receptive cones behind, to be exact. We may never reach the greatness of this beastly beautiful shrimp, so we must simply try to emulate it as best as we can, until the glorious day when we all shed our human skin and join the mantis shrimp in the great watery beyond, if you believe in that sort of thing.