When a darkling beetle performs a headstand, why a tortoise beetle's larva builds a shield out of its own feces and how a bombardier beetle manages to blast a 100-degree spray at will are a few of the 69 stories in a new book about how insects and other many-legged creatures protect themselves.

"Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions and Other Many-Legged Creatures" (Harvard University Press) by Cornell University's Thomas Eisner and Maria Eisner and Emory University's Melody Siegler is in equal parts handbook, field guide and photo album, chronicling the diverse and often astonishing defensive strategies that have allowed insects, spiders, scorpions and other multilegged creatures to thrive.

From cockroaches and termites to carpenter ants and honeybees and dozens of miniature creatures in between and from around the world, the authors describe the creatures' arsenals of sprays, venom, froth, feces, camouflage and sticky coatings. They not only provide a bug's-eye view of how these secret weapons actually work, but also explain the science behind them, from taxonomy and natural history to organic chemistry, chemical ecology and behavior. The book also contains an appendix with instructions for studying chemical defenses at home.

Intended for researchers as well as amateur naturalists, the 372-page book is richly illustrated with photographs by first author Thomas Eisner, the J.G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell and the recipient of the 2005 Rockefeller University Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science and the 1994 National Medal of Science. Maria Eisner is a research associate of biology.

"'Secret Weapons' is another triumph from the fabled Eisner laboratory -- a report on wonderful science backed up with spectacular pictures. It will introduce you to a fascinating world that few people know but everyone should know," writes biologist Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University in a review of the book.