Bombardier beetles are among the creatures on which no other animals prey on. They usually have a pretty easy life due to their effective defense mechanism. According to reports, when bombardier beetles are attacked or disturbed, they produce a chemical explosion and then release a jet of boiling, irritating liquid toward the attackers.

A research team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona and Brookhaven National Laboratory conducted a study and found about the creature’s ability to produce the toxic spray. The study has been published in Science by Eric Arndt, who is a MIT graduate student, Christine Ortiz, professor of materials science and engineering, Wendy Moore of the University of Arizona and Wah-Keat Lee from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

According to Arndt, the beetles’ defensive mechanism is very powerful and effective. It makes the creature invulnerable to most vertebrates, Arndt added. The toxic liquid that the creature ejects is called benzoquinone. According to the researchers, the liquid is actually a common defensive agent among insects, but bombardier beetles are unique in their ability as they heat the liquid before spraying it on an attacker.

The creatures mix two chemical precursors in a protective chamber. After mixing the materials, they heat the mixture to the boiling point. After that, they generate the much needed pressure to eject the chemical in a jet.

Ortiz said, “For decades, the complex mechanism of how the bombardier beetle achieves spray pulsation as a chemical defense has not been understood, because only external observations were used previously”.

To conduct the study, the researchers used high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging. With the help of that, they watched inside the abdomens of bombardier beetles. Argonne National Laboratory produced detailed images of the defense mechanism, which helped the researchers to understand how the process works.