Springtails are about the size of a pinhead, but they can control their jumps like seasoned acrobats. By Oliver Whang Among the wonders of the natural world that few people have ever noticed: a ...

Move over, Simone Biles. Nature’s gold medalist for backflips is a millimeter-tall arthropod that can barely straddle the tip of a pencil. “Nothing on Earth does a backflip faster than a globular ...

A tiny garden bug has been dubbed the real-life Sonic the Hedgehog because it does the fastest backflips on the planet. The “insanely fast” globular springtail completes a full body rotation in less ...

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 ...

Editor’s note: This story was updated Nov. 9, 2022. Springtails look chaotic to the untrained eye. Whether on a balmy pond or melting snow, the miniscule creatures are, true to their name, constantly ...

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 ...

Using a combination of computational and robophysical modeling, as well as fluid dynamics experiments, the researchers were able to see for the first time the mechanics of springtail movement. They ...

The next time you’re near a pond or creek, bend down and take a closer look—you just might see tiny insect-like organisms, not much bigger than the width of a spaghetti strand, taking incredible leaps ...

Using high-speed photography, researchers led by Víctor Ortega-Jiménez at the Georgia Institute of Technology have solved the mystery of how springtails jump away from danger and successfully land on ...