You may have been impressed by the gymnastics on display in Paris this summer, but a common backyard bug can top anything on display at the Porte de La Chapelle Arena.
At least, that's according to a new study that has provided the first comprehensive look at the remarkable jumping abilities of the globular springtail, a tiny hexapod that can backflip through the air at astonishing speeds.
Despite their diminutive size—usually only a couple of millimeters in length—these creatures exhibit an extraordinary escape mechanism that has long intrigued scientists.
"What excites me most about this research is how extraordinary the movements of these creatures are; there's nothing on Earth that does a backflip faster than a globular springtail," Adrian Smith, research assistant professor of biology at North Carolina State University, told Newsweek.
"When globular springtails jump, they don't just leap up and down, they flip through the air—it's the closest you can get to a Sonic the Hedgehog jump in real life," Smith said in a statement.
Globular springtails, which neither fly, bite, nor sting, rely solely on their jumping ability to avoid predators. Their leaps are so rapid that, to the naked eye, they appear to vanish from sight.
"I like to start a lot of my research projects by making an observation that I think no one else has before. A lot of times, that involves trying to film an insect or arthropod in a new way," Smith said.
"That's how this project started, just wanting to film these globular springtails at a level of detail that no one had before."
The study began with Smith collecting globular springtails from his own backyard, where they are commonly found in leaf litter during the colder months of December to March. But capturing their jumps in real time proved to be a significant challenge.
"If you try to film the jump with a regular camera, the springtail will appear in one frame, then vanish. When you look at the picture closely, you can see faint vapor trail curlicues left behind where it flipped through the one frame," Smith said.
To overcome this, Smith employed high-speed cameras capable of capturing 40,000 frames per second. By urging the springtails to jump with a light or a gentle prod from a paintbrush, he was able to analyze their takeoff, speed and landing techniques.
Unlike most jumping animals, globular springtails do not use their legs for propulsion. Instead, they rely on a specialized appendage called a furca, located under their abdomen. The furca flicks downward, using its tiny forked tip to push against the ground, launching the springtail into a series of rapid backflips.
The results were staggering. "It only takes a globular springtail one thousandth of a second to backflip off the ground, and they can reach a peak rate of 368 rotations per second," Smith said.
"They accelerate their bodies into a jump at about the same rate as a flea, but on top of that they spin."
The springtails can also launch themselves over 60 millimeters (2.4 inches) into the air—more than 60 times their body height.
They almost always jump backwards, which, according to Jacob Harrison, a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, suggests that their jumping is primarily a defensive maneuver.
"Their inability to jump forward was an indication to us that jumping is primarily a means to escape danger, rather than a form of general locomotion," Harrison said in a statement.
Landing, however, is less controlled. Globular springtails either tumble and bounce to a stop or use a sticky forked tube that they can evert to anchor themselves to a surface.
Both landing styles were observed, indicating that precision isn't as important as escape in the springtail's survival strategy.
But there's more to this study than a cool observation of something unseen before. The researchers want to understand the springtail's mechanics too.
"We're trying to better understand engineering-focused principles that these tiny organisms exhibit. But it's always best to start with as detailed, complete, and replicated of a description of things as possible before thinking about applications," Smith said.
He also hoped to bring the wonders of nature a little closer to home, adding: "Sometimes it can seem as though the only interesting and extraordinary parts of nature are hidden away in a far-off place or time. It can seem like there is nothing left worth admiring or discovering in the places where we live. This isn't true.
"These are things that live in my, and millions of other people's, suburban backyard.
"This is a great example of how we can find incredible, and largely undescribed, organisms living all around us."
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about paleontology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
References
Smith, A., & Harrison, J. (2024). Jumping performance and behavior of the globular springtail Dicyrtomina minuta. Integrative Organismal Biology, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/iob/obae029
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
