This beetle mixes two chemicals inside its own body to fire a boiling, corrosive spray

When threatened, a bombardier beetle combines hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones in an internal reaction chamber, triggering a violent chemical reaction that heats the mixture to near boiling and blasts it out as a jet of burning spray, aimed with a rotating nozzle at the tip of its abdomen. It can fire this defence dozens of times in rapid pulses.

— Entomological defence-mechanism research, Bombardier beetle — reaction chemistry described since the 1960s

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