Imagine witnessing a creature so fast that it seems to disappear right before your eyes, only to pop up again. Nope, we are not talking about the Flash zipping through the city. This amazing feat is depicted in real life by the globular springtail (Dicyrtomina minuta), a tiny insect that pulls off a gravity-defying jump in the blink of an eye. But the jump is not the only impressive weapon present in its armoury, it backflips into the air, launching itself with such force that it reaches over 60 times its body height.
A fascinating slow-motion video, shared on Instagram, has captured globular springtails showcasing their extraordinary jumping abilities. “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. So naturally I wanted to see how they do it,” said Adrian Smith, research assistant professor of biology at North Carolina State University as quoted by NC State University. “So naturally I wanted to see how they do it,” he added.
View this post on Instagram
Adrian Smith added that the speed of these jumps was so fast that it was impossible to capture it with a regular camera. “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 vapour trail curlicues left behind where it flipped through the one frame,” he explained.
According to Adrian Smith, a globular springtail can complete a backflip off the ground in just one-thousandth of a second and can spin at a rate of up to 368 rotations per second. Globular springtails not only jump fast but also spin rapidly. “No other animal on earth does a backflip faster than a globular springtail,” Smith said.
Adrian Smith’s eye-catching slow-motion drew a lot of attention online, with users flooding the comment section with varied reactions. “They’re just having a fun little time,” one social media user joked while another commented, “I see why they’re called springtails now. Amazing footage!”
Someone quipped, “olympics for the win,” and another pondered, “Imaging human can do that.”
“This footage is MINDBLOWING! Thank you for sharing,” read another comment.
Adrian Smith used high-speed cameras that capture 40,000 frames per second. He encouraged the springtails to leap by either illuminating them with a bright light or gently nudging them with a paintbrush. Smith closely observed their takeoff, flight and landing.
Comments
0 comment