Bombadier Beetle

• GeneralIt fires a chemical jet at 100°C from its abdomen with an audible crack.
• In an armoured chamber it mixes hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide with enzymes that set off an explosive reaction, in pulses of hundreds per second.
• It can swivel the tip of its abdomen and aim the discharge in almost any direction, even forwards by bouncing it off its elytra.
• Toads have been filmed swallowing a bombardier beetle and vomiting it up alive minutes later: the beetle was still detonating inside the stomach.
• It is the only animal known to be able to sustain an explosion of hot substances inside its own body.
• It stores 25 % hydrogen peroxide and 10 % hydroquinones separately; mixing them in a rigid-walled chamber with catalases and peroxidases, the reaction shoots out a jet of benzoquinones at 100 °C.
• It does not fire a continuous jet but a very rapid series of pulses, and aims the nozzle precisely at the exact point where it is being attacked.
• Two of the key ingredients, the benzoquinones and the peroxide, are potent cytotoxins: part of the mystery is how it stores them without harming itself.
• A 2025 study finally identified the enzymes involved and found that glucose is the stable precursor of both the peroxide and the hydroquinone.

Habitat & environment

Farmland, grassland and under stones on damp soil

Sources consulted: Vogel et al. (2025), Royal Society Open Science; Aneshansley y Eisner (1969), Science