Not just you in the night: Tiny bugs use superpropulsion to eject huge volumes of pee
Scientists have discovered that the tiny insects commonly known as sharpshooters use superpropulsion to ensure they can efficiently eject the huge volumes of urine they produce each day.
Sharpshooters eat plant sap, which is mostly water and light in nutrients. To consume enough to survive, they might need to emit 300 times their body weight in waste water every day. Researchers led by Saad Bhamla, assistant professor of biophysics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, chose this biological curiosity for more in-depth study and found an intriguing physical phenomenon at its heart.
Superpropulsion occurs when an oscillating surface propels a drop of liquid at a speed higher than that of the oscillating surface by exploiting the resonant frequency of the droplet. Sharpshooter insects – which might be just a few millimeters in length – form pee droplets through superpropulsion as a strategy to conserve energy. It's more efficient than other mechanisms of waste disposal, such as producing a jet stream – a method employed by other insects including Cicadidae, of which there are more than 3,200 species worldwide.
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