Sharpshooters

The sharpshooter's superpower is pee flinging. These insects consume nutrient-poor plant sap, so to get the calories they need, they have to drink 300 times their body weight each day. All that extra liquid has to go somewhere, so the sharpshooter evolved to be an expert excretor.  (Video and image credit: Deep Look) Read the full article

La "catapulte anale" de cet insecte lui permet de tirer des bulles d'urine hyperrapides selon des principes physiques encore jamais rencontrés dans la nature

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La bien nommée Cicadelle pisseuse (Homalodisca vitripennis) est l’insecte qui remporte la palme des Golden shower… tant en termes de volume, elle urine chaque jour jusqu’à 300 fois son propre poids, que de vitesse, car elle projette les gouttes plus vite que l’œil humain ne peut le voir. Et il s’avère qu’on ne peut être la première de ce genre sans avoir recours à d’étranges manipulations de la physique.

  Les cicadelles pisseuses catapultent des gouttes d’urine à 40 G en utilisant leurs derrières pour économiser de l'énergie

  Guru Med | 2 Mar 2023

  "... lorsque l’équipe a mesuré la vitesse de ces expulsions anales, elle a constaté qu’elles se déplaçaient 1,4 fois plus vite que le claquement de “fesses” qui les avait déclenchées. Cela suggère que les insectes utilisent un principe physique appelé superpropulsion, qui n’avait été observé auparavant que dans des systèmes synthétiques.

  Si vous avez déjà fait rebondir quelqu’un sur un trampoline et l’avez lancé bien plus haut, c’est de la superpropulsion. Dans ce cas, les mouches pisseuses font correspondre la fréquence de leurs battements de fesses à celle des gouttes de pipi pour obtenir le meilleur lancement possible.

  Cela semble une façon élaborée de se soulager, mais les chercheurs ont découvert qu’il s’agit de la méthode la plus économe en énergie pour leur mode de vie. Les cicadelles ne se nourrissent que de la sève des plantes à xylème, qui ne contient pratiquement aucun nutriment, ce qui signifie qu’elles doivent boire, et uriner, pratiquement en permanence.

  L’étude publiée dans Nature Communications : Droplet superpropulsion in an energetically constrained insect et présentée sur le site du Georgia Institute of Technology : Super-fast Insect Urination Powered by the Physics of Superpropulsion.

Sharpshooter Insects Use 'Superpropulsion' to Catapult Their Pee

Few threats are more damaging to a vineyard or citrus grove than a blight of sharpshooters. The half-inch-long insects are destructive agricultural pests because of their unquenchable thirsts and splashy bathroom habits: when nature calls, these bugs launch droplets of their watery pee and create puddles of disease-causing waste. Because their diet is mostly water, sharpshooters must constantly…

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Ars Technica: Watch these glassy-winged sharpshooters fling pee bubbles with anal catapult

This headline starts strong, then keeps getting better.

Not just you in the night: Tiny bugs use superpropulsion to eject huge volumes of pee

http://i.securitythinkingcap.com/Sk9t6k

Insect that flings pee with a butt catapult is 1st known example of 'superpropulsion' in nature

Glassy-winged sharpshooters rapidly fire their pee out of butt catapults. from Livescience https://www.livescience.com/insect-that-flings-pee-with-a-butt-catapult-is-1st-known-example-of-superpropulsion-in-nature via IFTTT

Super-fast insect urination powered by the physics of superpropulsion

Tiny insects known as sharpshooters excrete by catapulting urine drops at incredible accelerations. By using computational fluid dynamics and biophysical experiments, the researchers studied the fluidic, energetic, and biomechanical principles of excretion, revealing how an insect smaller than the tip of a pinky finger performs a feat of physics and bioengineering — superpropulsion.

"A solid surface, oscillating up and down, can launch a soft, wobbly ball into the air at higher speed than it would launch a hard ball of the same mass. That’s the surprising conclusion of a study by researchers in France, who demonstrate that a kind of synchronization between the internal vibration of a projectile and the frequency of the rising and falling surface can more than double the projectile’s kinetic energy. The phenomenon could have applications in ballistics or in microfluidic technology."

Sharpshooter insects excrete vast amounts of urine using an anal catapult

Sharpshooters eliminate up to 300 times their body weight in liquid waste each day, and save energy through a phenomenon called superpropulsion Life 28 February 2023 By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Tiny sharpshooter insects produce so much urine that they catapult it out of their bodies in energy-efficient, high-speed droplets instead of streaming it out. These insects feed on small amounts of…

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Sharpshooter Insects Use 'Superpropulsion' to Catapult Their Pee

Few threats are more damaging to a vineyard or citrus grove than a blight of sharpshooters. The half-inch-long insects are destructive agricultural pests because of their unquenchable thirsts and splashy bathroom habits: when nature calls, these bugs launch droplets of their watery pee and create puddles of disease-causing waste. Because their diet is mostly water, sharpshooters must constantly…

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