Hi Deep Look and KQED Science Fans, Do you have wine-tasting plans this spring? You might think that mist you’re feeling as you sit under a grapevine is rain. Think again! It’s actually droplets of pee being catapulted off of a sharpshooter’s backside! Sharpshooter insects spend their lives slurping the sap in grapevines. Getting rid of all their resulting watery waste is crucial to their survival. So, scientists are studying how sharpshooters urinate. Why? Learning how sharpshooters eject liquid could help humans design electronic devices like hearing aids and phones that can get rid of moisture. Learn more about these wizards of whizzing in this week’s video and newsletter!
To move out all the liquid they’ve guzzled, sharpshooters have perfected a super-propulsive urination technique using a special catapult in their butt called an anal stylus. Each drop of pee actually travels faster than the speed at which the butt flicker launched it.
An Alameda County firefighter hoses down a juvenile minke whale as it sits beached on the shores of Emeryville on Tuesday, April 8, 2025.(Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
KQED SCIENCE 4 Whales Have Died in the Bay Area in Less Than 2 Weeks. What's Going on? A rarely spotted juvenile minke whale that stranded itself near Emeryville was euthanized on Tuesday, days after three gray whales were found dead in the area. Experts say it’s unlikely the two species’ deaths were related.
🌱The sharpshooter gets all its nutrition from the thin, watery liquid inside a plant, called xylem sap, which it sucks out with a tube-shaped mouthpart called a stylet. 🥤Both the brightly-colored sharpshooter adults and their translucent nymphs feed on the sap in grapevines and other plants. The sap has so little nutrition that sharpshooters need to guzzle nonstop. 🛁The amount of sap a sharpshooter ingests every day is equivalent to 300 times its body weight. That's as if a human drank over 80 bathtubs of cucumber water in a day. 💧❤️Sharpshooters can fling pee faster than a cheetah can accelerate and they can pee even while mating!
PLAY
Name That Critter!
This fly’s larvae tunnel inside bitter-tasting greens like arugula and kale, leaving squiggly marks behind. The plants fight back with toxic chemicals. So before laying her eggs, the fly mom digs into a leaf and slurps its sap – a taste test to find the least toxic spot for her offspring. What is it? Find the answer at the bottom of this newsletter.
DEEP EVENT
Deep Look at the International Ocean Film Festival
Join Deep Look at the International Ocean Film Festival, running April 11-13 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco’s Fort Mason. Deep Look’s video about tiny sea stars that have very protective moms will be screening on Sunday, April 13, at 4 p.m. Josh Cassidy, Deep Look’s lead producer and cinematographer will be at the screening. Check out the full schedule and enjoy many other amazing ocean films.
UC Berkeley researcher Liz Clark uses a balloon to explain how sharpshooter insects catapult their urine very fast, a phenomenon called superpropulsion. “Nine times out of 10 the hardest part of making a Deep Look video is capturing an animal’s behavior in our relatively short filming windows,” says producer Mimi Schiffman. “Not for this one! Sharpshooters are eating and peeing, and peeing and eating, constantly. The biggest challenge in producing this video was explaining the physics of their propulsive pee. Researchers Liz Clark, Elio Challita and Saad Bhamla talked us through various real-world comparisons we could make to explain how their pee moves so quickly before we settled on this balloon scene. Go behind the scenes and catch a glimpse of Liz and Elio in our short video!”
We hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Thank you for subscribing! KQED’s Deep Look and Science teams!
ANSWER TO NAME THAT CRITTER
Leaf miner! One leaf miner insect that gardeners might find in their arugula is the larva of a fly called Scaptomyza. The fly is related to – and looks a lot like – the fruit fly you might find buzzing around your ripe bananas. Find out more in our video: Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad
