video: Synchrotron X-ray video of pulsed explosions inside bombardier beetle defensive glands while the beetle ejects its defensive spray, recorded at 2,000 frames per second, played back at 25 frames per second. Pulsating bright regions are vapor pockets inside the defensive glands; each pulse (enlargement and blurring of vapor pocket) corresponds to an explosion. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the May 1, 2015 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by E.M. Arndt at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues was titled, 'Mechanistic origins of bombardier beetle (Brachinini) explosion-induced defensive spray pulsation.' view more
Credit: [Credit: E. Arndt, W. Moore, W.-K. Lee, C. Ortiz]