Move over, Sonic. There's a new spin-jumping champion in town -- the globular springtail (Dicyrtomina minuta). This diminutive hexapod backflips into the air, spinning to over 60 times its body height in the blink of an eye, and a new study features the first in-depth look at its jumping prowess.
Move over, Sonic. There's a new spin-jumping champion in town -- the globular springtail . This diminutive hexapod backflips into the air, spinning to over 60 times its body height in the blink of an eye, and a new study features the first in-depth look at its jumping prowess.). This diminutive hexapod backflips into the air, spinning to over 60 times its body height in the blink of an eye, and a new study features the first in-depth look at its jumping prowess.
Finding the globular springtails was easy enough -- they're all around us. The ones in this study are usually out from December through March. Smith"recruited" his research subjects by sifting through leaf litter from his own backyard. But the next part proved to be the most challenging. Globular springtails don't use their legs to jump. Instead, they have an appendage called a furca that folds up underneath their abdomen and has a tiny, forked structure at its tip. When the springtails jump, the furca flips down and the forked tip pushes against the ground, launching them into a series of insanely fast backflips.
Landing was found in two styles: uncontrolled and anchored. Globular springtails do have a sticky forked tube they can evert -- or push out of their bodies -- to grapple a surface or halt their momentum, but Smith observed that bouncing and tumbling to a stop was just as common as anchored landings.
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