• the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    160
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 months ago

    I came here hoping to read more about this worm and its slime guns but no one did much yet so i had to look it up and now I’ve become the commenter i hoped to find? I hope the mildly interested people following after me find this cool:

    The slime is incredible stuff. It leaves the worm’s nozzles as twin streams of sticky liquid. But once it touches the target, it hardens almost immediately into a stiff, hard gel that is neither sticky nor soluble in water. It’s an incredible transformation and for the prey, it’s a fatal one. By ‘milking’ an Australian velvet worm called Euperipatoides rowelli and studying its slime, Haritos has discovered that its properties come from a special type of chaotic protein.

    Chaos Bolt! Man this worm is cool.

    National geographic (2 minute read)

  • herrcaptain@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    6 months ago

    According to Wikipedia it’s actually a slime attack, so let’s not get too excited. God’s favorite beast is still probably the Platypus.

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      6 months ago

      Have you seen the number of beetle species?

      God’s favorite critters are beetles for sure

      Platypus seems more like, “Let’s see how many features I can cram in something before it breaks people’s immersion.”

      • RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        6 months ago

        Hey Jesus, wanna build something with the spares box? It’s full with all the weird stuff I couldn’t fit into the other animals.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Yeah but they don’t show how random it is.

      In these still shots they look like focused beams but in reality they just spray that shit all over the place.

      Edit: Found a video.