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Chances are you've never seen a shrimp like this before.

A Florida fisherman got more than he bargained for when he pulled an 18-inch-long shrimp-like creature from the water while doing some nighttime fishing from a dock this week in Fort Pierce, Florida, a coastal city about a two-hour drive north from Miami.

Steve Bargeron, who was fishing on the same dock where the creature was snagged, snapped the photos above and shared them with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service. After FWS posted them on the agency's Facebook page, the photos went viral and have since garnered more than 7,600 shares.

"Steve said the massive thing was about 18 inches long and striking its own tail, so he grabbed it by its back like a lobster," FWS wrote. "Scientists think it may be some type of mantis shrimp (which are actually not related to shrimp, but are a type of crustacean called a stomatopod), and continue to review the photos to identify the exact species."

If it turns out to be a mantis shrimp, this one would be an extraordinarily big one. Most mantis shrimps grow to about 2 to 7 inches long, though exceptionally large ones have been found that measured 12 to 15 inches long.

As the online comic The Oatmeal describes, the mantis shrimp is "one of the most creatively violent animals on Earth," with deadly appendages that can strike prey 50 times faster than the blink of an eye and with a punch that equals the speed of a .22 caliber bullet, oceanographers at Baltimore's National Aquarium point out.

They're usually found in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, and their lineage can be traced back more than 500 million years.