Insects have a long list of ingenious means for fending off predators. They go in for camouflage coloring and offensive odors; in some cases they even mimic other insects that their enemy has no taste for. But few match the imaginative arsenal of the litt1e (quarter-inch long) Stenodus beetle, which has a defense mechanism as sophisticated as tomorrow's anti-missile missile. Attacked by a water strider, a fast, long-legged bug that is its customary nemesis, the Stenodus simply squirts out a charge of fluid detergent from a pair of abdominal glands. The detergent destroys...
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