Short Wave - All Hail The Butt Flicker

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

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. Want to hear more about nature's superpowers? Send us an email at [e-mail]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Saad Bamla is a scientist and a tinkerer at his lab at Georgia Tech. He leads a group studying the physics of life. I'm very promiscuous in my organism, so nothing is off the table. The Bomla lab studies the biomechanics, so the movement of different organisms. Springtails, flamingos, worms, cicadas. A few years ago, Saad decided to turn one of his lab's research. research papers into a comic book.

The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms, a Slingshot Spider. This comic is set deep in the Amazon rainforest, and it's all about the slingshot spider. This spider has an amazing adaptation to turn its web into a high-speed trap to catch prey. First, the spider grips the silk line of its web with its pedipops and front legs. A portion of the web is bundled into a tight coil. A coil so tight, the web takes the shape. of a cone. And when the spider senses a hapless flying insect, it releases the line with its front legs and flings itself on the web backwards to snack its prey. Ac, eep. Those are the flies

saying, ac, eep. It's the slingshot spider as it flies through the air like a daredevil. And the illustrator, Lindsay Lee drew it like a circus performer. So the spider is being launched out of a cannon with a cape and a crash helmet. In fact, it has the fastest full body motion of any arachnid. What a daredevil. Wee! Sade read me the whole comic. It was awesome. It's based on actual research. A paper published in the journal Current Biology in 2020 that was led by Simone Alexander. For a lot of scientists, after publishing, they just call it a day. But back in 2020, when Saad went to check if anyone had actually read the paper... I think it was abysmal. I think we got a few clicks on it. The people reading and clicking were other scientists. And it kind of dawned on me

that forget other adults, no kid ever would go to currentbiology.org and actually download this and read this. And so there was this lingering feeling that there has to be a better way to share this beautiful discovery. So Saad decided that from that point on, for every research paper the lab published, they would also invest in creating a comic book. Today on the show, we jump into a biophysics comic book to learn how animals eject fluids and why a comic about butt-flicking insects is a valuable way to take science beyond the lab. I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, so, Sod, your comic series has a name. It's called The Curious.

Sioux of extraordinary organisms. Yes. Yeah, and your main illustrators are Lindsay Lee and Jordan Culver, so shout out to them. We're going to walk through a couple of the comics, starting with the one called Behold the Bug that Super Propels P. And this comic is all about a bug called the Glassy Wing Sharp Shooter. Who is this character?

It's a tiny bug. They drink juices from plants, like they're zes. xylem fluid, and then they leave behind a gift, which is a bacteria called xylela facidiosa, which creates a lot of problems across the United States from California to in the for vines and then citrus from Florida. But it's a beautiful bug, and it drinks a lot, and it pees a lot. So the co-creators of this comic, Jordan Culver and Rick Worth, depict this sharpshooter as an outlaw in a cowboy hat with a cataple on its butt.

to fling away a bead of pee? And this is known as a butt flicker? How did you figure out how the butt flicker works? And how do you even measure the speed at which this glassy winged sharpshooter ejects its pee into the world? I was actually at my son's pre-K, who's five-year-old, and showing this. And he loves it and all the kids love it because they've never seen pee. Like to me, this is the most beautiful pee in the world. It's like a perfect drop.

So we used macro lenses that allow us to zoom in effectively a microscope but with a high-speed camera. And that's where we kind of focus in on the business end of this bug, which is the butt flicker like you shared. And yeah, it was so amazing for the first time to see how it flicks these droplets at such high speeds. It's just incredible. It ejects them, you write in the comic, 40 times faster than a cheetah accelerates. Yeah. And the droplet moves faster than the butt flicker. And you compare it to like as if a baseball were to move faster than the arm of the baseball pitcher.

How is that even possible? How can the droplet like pick up speed in the air? This was the whole conundrum. And my graduates went Elio Chalita who did this work. And he showed me this. I didn't believe it. And we checked again and again. And the kind of aha moment, which is these droplets are compressible.

They deform and squishy because of surfaced. tension. So they store energy by squishing it, just like if you had a jello. Or like a water balloon. Exactly, like a water balloon. So it can store energy by surface tension. And that was why we call it super propulsion because it gets some energy for free by storing energy in the deformation or the squishiness of the drop. And because they're so small, surface tension you're saying would keep the drop stuck to them. So it'd be like if our pee just like wouldn't come off of us. So they also need the flicker to just be like, ugh, get away. Precisely. It sticks to them. And so they have to. give this flick. Yeah. And what's cool is in the comic, you say that studying super propulsion

like this could help us humans design devices to fling away liquid too. A neat example of this is in your smart watches or hearing aids. Smart watches, for example, have a button where after you go for a swim, you can press a button and ejects the water to protect the electronics. We think we can learn a trick or two from the sharpshooter and improve the ability of these low-power electronics to eject water from tiny crevices and areas using very minimal energy. And our friend, the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter, makes a return in the comic Captain Cicada and the Jets Distice League, which is based on two papers about fluid ejection

and nature. And I want to focus on the part in the comic that a confrontation between our guy, the sharpshooter, and the much bigger cicada. So the sharpshooter and the cicada, they meet on a tree branch, and they're both chugging their xylem beer. And I want you to read me what happens next. Okay, will you play the part of Captain Cicada? Yes. I'll be sheriff's sharpshooter.

Yeah. Howdy, cousin. Word is that you're hogging all the xylem around these parts. Oh, no. You already had your comic. It's my turn, Sheriff's Sharp Shooter. I think we need to settle this with a good old-fashioned shootout. How many pieces?

And then what happens? It's a battle of fluids. They're shooting, shooting. They're peeing on each other. They're peeing on each other. So they're both drinking xyle and fluid. But the cicada, because it's larger, it doesn't need to conserve energy by and doesn't have these butt flickers.

So it, you know, loosely speaking is similar to us or other mammals, different body structures, but it can make jets at this point. Yeah. Evolution is. amazing because the comic then ends with all these other animals that can jet fluid, like not just pee. Yeah. Yeah, you have the archer for fish hunting, the octopus for deception. Together, along with the spitting spider, they become the JetStice League.

Did Marvel sue you over this? That would be interesting. I don't think they even made it on their radar. All right. What is the feedback you've gotten on this? One email I got, this is during the pandemic a couple of years ago. This was around the time in Lebanon. There was the explosion and the economy was tank,

and there was a lot of children who are now in refugee camps. And so an educator who was doing this for nonprofit reached out and said, oh, I printed all your comics because many of these kids are now displaced and in refugee camps, and we were having a hard time getting textbooks and teaching them. So the comics reminded them about kind of living systems and biology where in certain situations they may not encounter them. So they really were grateful and appreciated and made my heart kind of warm. This comic work has garnered quite a bit of attention,

a National Science Foundation career grant. You've received so many different forms of recognition for this work. But when you step outside the scientific community, how do you see the comics in regards to just people who perhaps don't know anything about science and don't trust science? I'll tell you a recent story in December after Christmas break.

We were out camping in the middle of nowhere in Georgia at the state park, Magnolia Springs State Park. And so I met this local, Georgian woman. She lives in a farm nearby and enjoys. And she said, well, what do you do? And I explain. I'm a scientist. And I study bugs. And she says, why? And I really love animals. And we were able to connect because she said, I'll tell you this, but don't report me into animal control. And it's like, why? Why would I do that? She says, I love possums. And I have three possums in my house. They're just like my pets. And this is a person that I would never encounter in Atlanta, Georgia, right? This is

rural Georgia, middle of nowhere, but we are still able to connect over our shared love of animals. And I think sometimes it takes stepping out of these ivory towers that scientists put themselves in writing these fancy journals that really exclude, you know, taxpayers, my neighbors who pay for this. So kind of that's, I think a little bit onus is on us, is to step out of our comfort zone. and not underestimate the average American. I think they're resilient, curious, and perhaps sometimes we hold ourselves back. Saad, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you, Emily. Thank you for doing what you do. This episode was produced by Burley McCoy and Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and Jeff Brumfield. Tyler Jones, checked the facts. Quasi Lee was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of Podcasting Strategy.

I'm Emily Kwong. See you tomorrow on Shortwave from NPR.