All Hail The Butt Flicker

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did you know there's an insect that can fling its pee 40 times faster than a cheetah accelerates? We did — thanks to a comic from the Bhamla Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since 2020, principal investigator Saad Bhamla has been leading the charge to make science more accessible by publishing comics alongside every paper his lab publishes. Today, he introduces Emily to two of the most popular characters — Sheriff Sharpshooter and Captain Cicada — and shares why a comic about butt-flicking insects is a valuable way to take science beyond the lab.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You have your job, but you also have a life, and you're not just one thing.
0:06.3	Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast.
0:09.2	Every weekday, we break down the biggest story of the day and something else, like a new
0:13.9	trend everyone's talking about.
0:15.7	It's Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBR.
0:24.3	Your Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBR. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:30.4	Saad Bamla is a scientist and a tinkerer at his lab at Georgia Tech.
0:35.2	He leads a group studying the physics of life.
0:38.1	I'm very promiscuous in my organism, so nothing is off the table.
0:43.0	The Bomla Lab studies the biomechanics, so the movement of different organisms.
0:49.6	Springtails, flamingos, worms, cicadas.
0:54.1	A few years ago, Saad decided to turn one of his lab's research papers into a comic book.
1:00.6	The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms, a Slingshot Spider.
1:05.6	This comic is set deep in the Amazon rainforest, and it's all about the slingshot spider.
1:16.6	This spider has an amazing adaptation to turn its web into a high-speed trap to catch prey. First, the spider grips a silk line of its web with its pettipops and front legs.
1:22.6	A portion of the web is bundled into a tight coil.
1:25.6	A coil so tight, the web takes the shape of a cone.
1:29.2	And when this spider senses a hapless flying insect,
1:32.9	it releases the line with its front legs and flings itself and the web backwards to snack its prey.
1:39.8	Ack, eep!
1:41.6	Those are the flies saying, AK, eep.
1:45.7	It's the slingshot spider as it flies through the air like a daredevil.
	...

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