This is a 75-100mm long animal that is beige to greenish in colour. Females can have a distinctly red stripe up the back. The shrimps body is very flexible and it can turn and completely reverse it’s position in the narrow burrow. It has strange shaped pincers which look just like the fore limbs of a praying mantis, these have a very sharp inner surface and can cut unwary fingers. The pincer fold up like a pocket knife.

It lives in sandy or muddy intertidal flats where it creates extensive and elaborate burrow systems.

This is a ferocious predator.

Powell, A. W. B (1993) Native animals of NZ