GROSS OUT?

Bad food + vomit = good self-defense! The grasshopper species Schistocerca emarginata eats foul-smelling skunk bush, then vomits to prevent being swallowed by predators like the green anole lizard. "Grasshoppers are like jelly doughtnuts," says biologist Greg Sword at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When an anole tries to chomp on this grasshopper, "instead of jelly, vomit squirts out". It tastes so disgusting, the grasshopper gets spat out--and lives.

Sword knows firsthand: He ran his own taste test. (Hey, don't try this at home!) "The grasshoppers that ate skunk bush tasted gross," he says. But grasshoppers that he fed romaine lettuce for a day, "tasted fine to me." The anoles thought so, too--most of the lettuce-vomiting grasshoppers got gobbled up.