Bombardier Beetles escape death by farting their way to safety

[boingboing]

Originally published at: Bombardier Beetles escape death by farting their way to safety | Boing Boing

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[Mindysan33]

[FathomBlue]

I like this footage from BBC Earth…

Bombardier Beetle Sprays Acid From Its Rear | Life | BBC Earth

[anothernewbbaccount]

I’m excreting noxious chemicals from my anus right now!

(And this is definitely my kind of beetle!)

[Neville_Holland]

Finally found my spirit animal - I’ve been using this technique to escape my wife for many years.

[generic_name]

@boingboing

excrete boiling chemicals from its anus

“Fart”? Sounds more like diarrhea.

Looking forward to the Marvel comic where a young entomologist is bitten by radioactive Bombardier Beetle.

[Papasan]

The “crop-duster” beetle, Ok with me.

[JohnEightThirty]

Headline: beetles escape death

Fine print: 43% of the time

So they sometimes escape death, but more often they don’t. No taxes, though, I guess.

[TripleE]

I have found my brethren in nature.

Pants off to you Bombardier Beetle.

[chenille]

Except it’s not from its anus, it’s from a pair of pygidial glands. Yes, they’re at the tip of the abdomen, which can be aimed really well, but as far as everything else says they’re not connected with the digestive tract at all. A nice video but given a disappointingly misleading headline, NatGeo.

[siloxane]

[xyandzee]

Cute.

[allenk]

Jeez, what cold kinda bastard do you have to be to dump one of these poor beetles in the tank with one of those poor frogs, just for The Views?

[NukeML]

Ah the poor bombardier beetle, the classic example used by creationists as proof that evolution could not have caused this animal to come into being. That and bananas.