Didn’t that toad notice that the beetle was yellow and black, hello? Just the other day I was talking with an entomologist about the warning colors on insects that are toxic. Yellow and black was one of the color combinations he mentioned…fascinating stuff here…
Do you think that same toad would eat another Bombardier Beetle again it its lifetime?
…Asian bombardier beetles (Pheropsophus jessoensis) can hatch an escape plan even after they’ve been swallowed. Once inside a predator’s stomach, the beetles eject a hot chemical spray that induces vomiting. To find out just how effective that chemical spray is, scientists collected bombardier beetles from forests in central Japan, took them back to their lab, and fed them to two predators, the Japanese common toad and the Japanese stream toad.
