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 ...

Early in the pandemic, Víctor Ortega-Jiménez was exploring creeks near his home and observing springtails. The organisms are the most abundant non-insect hexapods on earth, and Ortega-Jiménez ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

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 ...