Bizarre liquid jets explained - the Kaye effect

Hold on a second. I'll be right back after I grab a tray and a bottle of shampoo.

The streams of shampoo above shoot out from the pile of shampoo with nothing other than gravity and really thin streams falling from above.

Turns out it's because shampoo is sheer thinning (like ketchup is) but that shampoo makes the transition from high to low viscosity very quickly, quickly enough to create divots (as its viscosity decreases) in the accumulating pile but then become highly viscous and shoot off the other side of the 'ramp' that they've just created.

Who knew?