This odd animal has one of the fastest bites in the world

[joey_bladb]

@Beanolini

the prey is not only captured, but is liquified in the process

Apparently not, you can see this prey item retained its shape:

Well, suffice to say, the prey probably has a terrible headache.

[MadLibrarian]

I remember cavitation from dealing with vane pumps.

[DukeTrout]

[DukeTrout]

@Spizella

Booshwah, my bird can strike faster than this, and footpunch an overcaffeined mantis shrimp on the way out, and no one would see anything but the red, coagulating result…

Mantis shrimp don’t bleed…

https://media.giphy.com/media/HFLtawurbkeDC/giphy.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

[Spizella]

I was actually thinking of my blood lol, but she’s pretty fast, even without the hyperbole. Somehow this got me wondering how fast rattlesnakes strike, and I came across this interesting paragraph:

The researchers noted that to achieve such speeds so quickly all three snakes experienced very fast acceleration of their heads, averaging 190 m/s2—more than that experienced by human fighter pilots. The trio also compared strike speeds against prey response times and found that the snakes reached their targets in just 50 to 90 milliseconds—typical prey, they note, have been found to activate muscle reactions very quickly as well, from 14 to 151 milliseconds, which explains how it is that the snakes are able to land a hit more often than not on such swiftly reacting targets. The researchers also note that the blink of an eye typically lasts on average 220 milliseconds, which means those who blink are likely to miss a snake strike.

From this article:

Vipers found to not have the fastest strike after all

[hecep]

@FGD135

Nah, I’m just a civil engineer who reads a lot.

Glad to see another “fluids” guy here… and – no – there’s no such thing as 'just an engineer’… civil or otherwise.

[FGD135]

Re: cavitation

KLM funds new "Flying-V" plane design where passengers sit inside the wings

(-: BTW, the single D-IV (partial) failure was the result of cavitation in the LOX lines fooling sensors into thinking the LOX had run out. Nothing to do with the hydrogen. (-:

[AnthonyI]

I don’t think it’s very frog-like in regards to it’s namesake. It doesn’t look like a frog. It doesn’t move like one. It sort of feeds like one, but lots of fish eat that way, although not as fast. I vote for renaming it.

[bobtato]

@GulliverFoyle

Given Clancy’s fondness for Cold War tech, I’m guessing he partially based the caterpillar drive off real world attempts at supercavitation vehicles

In the book, it was just an impeller, which is not an exotic idea, but I guess at the time hadn’t been developed as a quiet propulsion system for submarines. In the movie, the caterpillar drive is said to use magnetohydrodynamic propulsion, which was and is much more science-fictional. When Jeffery Jones’s character describes it as “like a jet engine for the water”, that line is taken directly from the book; what he describes is not in any way like a jet engine for the water. (That exchange was what led me to read the book, because I was such a disgusting nerd as a kid)