Word: schildknecht
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reducing it to paralysis or trembling confusion. Until recently, the bombardier beetle's efficient defensive weapon was pretty much of a mystery. Entomologists thought that it simply squirted out a liquid that exploded on hitting the air. But in West Germany's Angewandte Chemie, Dr. Hermann Schildknecht of Erlanger University's Institute for Organic Chemistry has revealed the bombardier's secret: it is armed with two genuine cannons, each with a strong chamber for real internal explosions...
...Schildknecht, a famed expert on delicate chemical analyses, some years ago devised a set of instruments so perfect that he yearned to try them on organic matter that had long defied other chemists. He remembered the bombardier beetles, which he had known when his father took him to hear their small artillery on Sunday afternoons. Enlisting his wife and 17 students, Dr. Schildknecht searched a limestone region near Bayreuth and collected a good supply of the beetles. After training himself in the art of insect surgery, he learned how to extract intact the complicated plumbing in their behinds...
Each of the paired cannons, he found, has glands that discharge a fluid into a saclike reservoir. Using his best microtechniques, Dr. Schildknecht next analyzed the fluid and found to his amazement that it was about 10% hydroquinone and toluhydroquinone (acrid compounds related to carbolic acid) and 23% hydrogen peroxide. When mixed in a test tube these chemicals reacted spontaneously, giving off copious gas, but something still unknown keeps them from reacting as long as they lie undisturbed in the beetle's ammunition sacs...
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