New answers tagged anatomy
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Fieldfares guard their nests by attacking predators with their poop. Arguably feces is undigested material, but it does contain some secretions made in the body. Admittedly, fieldfare poop is more of a paste than a solid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdrl__ggV9k
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No, there are not animals which produce solid projectiles to shoot/launch/throw for defence or hunting. I think these criteria mean "aimed and detached".
There are tethered projectiles like cnidocyst in Cnidaria, but they don't detach (Wikipedia/cnidocyte). Harpoon-like organ in cone snails which is mentioned by @fileunderwater doesn't detach from ...
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There is a plant called Sphagnum that disperses its seeds through an explosion that functions similar to that of a cap gun. It's pretty sick.
here it is in action
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Spitting spiders will shoot their strands of web (extremely quickly) toward prey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFozCr_tj8I
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An excellent example (unless you consider this a tool) of a weapon using animal would be the "web casting spiders" which are a diverse group of spiders known as the Deinopidae. These spiders create a special elastic web that they hold between their fore-feet, and then dangling down from a surface, they expand and push the web onto their prey.
There ...
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Although not a hard projectile the Archerfish shoots water
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archerfish
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It is a common notion that porcupines can shoots spines but in reality, they can't. But there are some animals that can shoot/throw projectiles at the target as a result of either offensive or defensive mechanism. The projectile can be anything ranging from spikes or thorn to big objects like rocks, sticks, nuts or even faeces. You can find the details in ...
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A good exemple should be the “harpoon” in cone snails (Conidae), which is created from a modified tooth inside their proboscis.
(Cone snail with proboscis, from KQED.org)
The harpoon is launched at prey at close distance, and is used to poison and stun prey, and later to pull them in. According to high-speed camera capture the harpoon is launched in just ...
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