Word: stenodus
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Insects have a long list of ingenious means for fending off predators. They go in for camouflage coloring and offensive odors; in some cases they even mimic other insects that their enemy has no taste for. But few match the imaginative arsenal of the litt1e (quarter-inch long) Stenodus beetle, which has a defense mechanism as sophisticated as tomorrow's anti-missile missile. Attacked by a water strider, a fast, long-legged bug that is its customary nemesis, the Stenodus simply squirts out a charge of fluid detergent from a pair of abdominal glands. The detergent destroys the thin...
...Feet at Top Speed. This novel means of protection was discovered almost accidentally by German Entomologists Karl Linsenmair and Dr. Rudolf lander of Freiburg Zoological Institute. In flooded gravel pits alongside the Karlsruhe-Basle autobahn, the two men were studying the orientation mechanism by which the Stenodus does its navigation...
...more Linsenmair and Jander watched, however, the more they were struck by another phenomenon. The Stenodus beetles normally move across water by slow paddling. But whenever they were attacked, they spurted out of danger at much greater speed. They can travel 21 ft. a second and can continue at that pace as far as 45 ft. This rapid motion had been noted by entomologists since the turn of the century, but no one had explained it. Linsenmair and Jander discovered that the Stenodus' getaway power came from its internally manufactured detergent...
Kills Every Time. If a Stenodus exhausts all of its detergent in one 45-ft. dash, it needs a week or more to replenish its supply. But the canny beetle seems to know this and uses its emergency throttle sparingly. Linsenmair and Jander watched Stenodus beetles turning and weaving like PT boats, as if to catch their enemies squarely in their wakes. Like most weapons, though, the Stenodus' go power can be outmaneuvered: the detergent works only astern, and water striders on frontal-attack patterns made kills every time...
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