Bombardier beetle vs. hungry frog
A frog catches a bombardier beetle and spits it out seconds later: the beetle has sprayed chemicals at nearly 100 °C inside its mouth. Two glands hold hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones; muscles push a little into a chamber lined with enzymes, where reactions make heat, oxygen gas and irritating benzoquinones. The spray leaves in roughly 500 pulses a second, so the beetle never has to store anything hot. And in one lab study, 43% of toads that swallowed the beetles threw them back up, and every beetle was still alive.
- 0:00 The catch
- 0:02 Spit and replay
- 0:13 Inside the beetle
- 0:23 The chemical reaction
- 0:39 Five hundred pulses
- 0:52 Never stored hot
- 1:01 The toad experiment
- 1:14 The frog moves on