Blowgun
A silent tube weapon firing poison darts
The blowgun (or blowpipe) is a projectile weapon: a long, narrow tube, roughly 100โ300 cm, through which a dart is launched by the breath. With no powder or bowstring, it sends only a light dart by lung power, so the weapon itself does little harm โ the plant poison smeared on the dart tip is the real killing agent. Its great strength is silence: the shot makes almost no sound and has no recoil, letting a hunter hit the mark before the quarry takes alarm. Its effective range is short, about 10โ30 m, but its accuracy is high. The hunting peoples of the tropics โ the Amazon, the Dayak of Borneo, the practitioners of the Japanese fukiya โ each developed it independently as the archetypal silent, poison-tipped hunting tool.