Scientists looked at how the slow-moving velvet worm uses a terrifying slime attack to kill crickets and termites.
The researchers wondered how such a slothful creature could shoot two jets of a gluey substance out of openings on its head in only a matter of seconds, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science reported.
To answer this question, the team of researchers combined principles of "anatomy, mathematics, experimental physics, and fluid dynamics." The worm has a slime-shooting apparatus comparable to large syringe with an end like a bendy straw, and it takes only a small squeeze of this reservoir to eject the slime with impressive speed and force.
"The geometry of the system allows the worm to squirt fast and cover a wide area. That's the magic," said lead author Andrés Concha, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard SEAS and now an assistant professor at Adolfo Ibañez University in Chile.
In order to achieve the "hosepipe" effect using such small passages, the worm employs elasticity and corrugated shape of its papillae, which lower the fluid velocity necessary to shake the tubes.
The insights into this fascinating system could allow researchers to create ultra-efficient flexible microfluidic systems in a lab setting that facilitate the mixing of substances or development of fibrous nets.
The findings also bring up the question of how such a complex and efficient squirting mechanism evolved to work in worms of different sizes.
"That's a great biological question," Concha said. "By experience, we know that it works for all of these worms. Now, how they adapt the materials and the inner diameter of the hole inside the papillae, I don't know. It's very impressive. Even for babies, it works. You have a gigantic worm that's eight or nine inches long and the baby is one inch, and already the mechanism is working."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Nature Communications.
