HONG KONG: A lot of predators may have known by now to stay clear of the Bombardier beetle. The name itself connotes what kind of reception one will get when they threaten this tiny but war-ready insect.
Since it always feel threaten, its trigger happy. If any predator is unlucky enough and would try to make it food for breakfast or anytime for that matter, all they will get are those boiling hot chemicals as they shoot out in quick succession like a Gatling machine gun. And there’s nothing in the world that shoots faster than that.
According to the researchers from the University of Arizona these chemicals issue out from their abdomen and the fire power is so rapid that a ‘gun smoke’ can be seen coming out of the ‘barrel’. These chemical bullets don’t affect the beetle at all. They are immune to it.
“Understanding how these beetles produce – and survive – repetitive explosions could provide new design principles for technologies such as blast mitigation and propulsion,” said the lead authors of the study.
The research was led by doctoral student Eric Arndt and Christine Ortiz in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
The researchers used enzymes to clean the digestive chamber where the “ammunition” originates, and examined it with optical microscopy. They noticed some regions of the chamber wall were thicker than others, and the area near the mixing valve was particularly thin and weak.
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