page_title: Projectile use by non-human organisms
section_title: Solid projectiles
hierarchical_section_title: Projectile use by non-human organisms / Animals / Solid projectiles
caption_attribution_description: English: An adult female of Brachypelma smithi, showing a bald patch after kicking hairs off her abdomen. After molting, the hairs will grow again.
context_page_description: Although projectiles are commonly used in human conflict, projectile use by organisms other than humans is relatively rare.
context_section_description: Some New World tarantulas have a dense covering of hairs called urticating hairs on the abdomen that they sometimes use as protection against enemies. Species with urticating hairs can kick these hairs off; they are flicked into the air at a target using their back pairs of legs. These fine hairs are barbed and designed to irritate and can be lethal to small animals such as rodents. The symptoms range from a burning itch to a minor rash, from being lethal to simply being a deterrent. With humans, they can cause irritation to the eyes, nose, and skin, and more dangerously, the lungs and airways, if inhaled.  In some cases, tarantula hairs have caused permanent damage to human eyes. Urticating hairs do not grow back, but are replaced with each moult.
  Another invertebrate, the antlion, also makes use of solid projectiles. The antlion lies at the bottom of a sloping pit that it digs in the sand. Small prey slip into the pit on the loose substrate. If the prey crawls up the slopes of the pit, the antlion throws sand at the prey, which may dislodge it and send it back down the pit. 
  In gastropods, cone snails have modified radula tooth which is stored in the radular sac and at the end of proboscis, acting like a harpoon. Their "harpoon" is venomous, which assists cone snail to paralyze or kill the prey before eating it.
  A number of vertebrate species also make use of solid projectiles. Among birds the hornbill uses projectile motion to eat food. The hornbill's beak typically only contacts at the tip, and it has a short tongue. To swallow food the hornbill instead throws the food from the tip of its long bill backwards into the throat. One example of solid projectile use among mammals is the California ground squirrel, which is known to distract predators such as the rattlesnake and gopher snake from locating their nest burrows by kicking sand into their eyes. A wild female African elephant has also been observed to throw various materials at an interfering rhino. Orcas have been observed to throw seal prey using their tail flukes in apparent play behavior. Some primates, including humans, can throw objects such as rocks, sticks, and feces as projectiles. Primates that are known to throw are humans, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, capuchins, certain gibbons and perhaps some baboons and Japanese macaques (although not rhesus macaques). A chimpanzee named Santino in a Swedish zoo was observed to stockpile stones to be used as missiles against visitors.
caption: Adult female Brachypelma smithi, showing a bald patch after kicking hairs off her abdomen.
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