Figure 1: Slime jet oscillations and jet speed during worm attack.

Giant red velvet worm Peripatus solorzanoi used to record the squirting process. Full-body length is ~17.5 cm. In a, a soft paintbrush used to activate its attack is shown, and it was digitally removed in the other snapshots for clarity. (a–d) Different stages of the attack recorded at 480 f.p.s. The active part of the attack is completed in Δt_squirt~65 ms. (e) Slime pattern generated on a wall of the foam tunnel used to keep worms at focal distance (scale bar, 1 cm). Three or more oscillations of the slime jet are the typical outcome. (f) Liquid jet tip position as a function of time for the squirt. For this data, we used two cameras: one at 30 f.p.s. and the other at 480 f.p.s. The two cameras configuration allowed us to compute the jet velocity. The solid line corresponds to a squirt speed of V=5.0 m s⁻¹ and the dotted line to a squirt speed of V=3.2 m s⁻¹. Solid red dots and green triangles correspond to left and right papilla, respectively.