Composite image of a jumping spherical collembolan
Adrian Smith
High-speed cameras have clearly captured the springtails spinning in the air faster than any other animal ever recorded.
Springtails are a type of arthropod, a group related to insects, that are a few millimeters long and can be found in most places on Earth.
As its name suggests, the animal leaps off the ground using a tail-like appendage called a “furka” that folds up under its body and can instantly unfold to launch the creature into the air and escape predators.
Adrian Smith of North Carolina State University was sifting through leaves in his backyard when he spotted a round, mottled orange-and-brown spider. Dikiltmina Minuta.
“We brought them into the lab to film them, and we were amazed by what they did,” Smith says.
Smith and Jacob Harrison of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta used high-speed cameras to capture dozens of Springtail jumps. To encourage the arthropods to jump, the researchers placed them under bright lights and even poked them with tiny paintbrushes.
With each jump, the tiny acrobatic creatures arc backwards up to 80 times their body length, and springtails can spin faster than any animal yet studied, completing up to 368 rotations per second.
Smith and Harrison found that springtails have two ways of landing: by bouncing and rolling uncontrollably, or by a stationary stop made possible by organs called colophores, sticky tubes that allow them to attach to the ground.
Scientists continue to study the jumping mechanics of springtails for engineering clues, and they are also studying the forward somersaults of the blue-green algae, another arthropod that has evolved a rapid escape jump.
Smith says people may think that everything in the natural world is explained and known, but that’s not the case: “There’s so much that exists within us and between us that is incredible.”
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(Tag ToTranslate) Animals
