All Hail The Butt Flicker
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Who is Saad Bhamla and what does his lab study?
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 organisms, so nothing is off the table.
The Bamla 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 papers into a comic book.
What is the slingshot spider and how does it catch prey?
The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms, The 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 pedipalps 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 and the web backwards to snack its prey. Those are the flies saying, 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.
Why did Saad Bhamla create comic books for his research papers?
Whee! Saad 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.
Check it out at plus.npr.org.
What is the comic series 'The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms' about?
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Who is the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter and why is it called a 'butt flicker'?
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR. Okay, so Saad, your comic series has a name. It's called The Curious Zoo 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 Sharpshooter.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Saad Bhamla and what does his lab study?
0:24–1:00
2
What is the slingshot spider and how does it catch prey?
1:00–2:03
3
Why did Saad Bhamla create comic books for his research papers?
2:03–3:50
4
What is the comic series 'The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms' about?
3:50–4:15
5
Who is the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter and why is it called a 'butt flicker'?
4:15–6:04
6
How does the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter eject its pee at incredible speeds?
6:04–6:38
7
What scientific techniques were used to study the sharpshooter's pee ejection?
6:38–7:33
8
How do droplets gain speed after being ejected by the sharpshooter?
7:33–14:46