That little speck at the bottom
of the frame is a springtail. It's standing on water and it's about
to do something incredible. Ready? A perfect landing after 14 backflips across a
distance of at least 14 body lengths. Incredible, right? The jumping behavior of springtails is
amazing, but it's incredibly understudied and mostly undescribed. This folder is the total
amount of science done describing their jumps, and it's pretty thin. This isn't
because these animals are hard to find, they're nearly everywhere. It's probably
because of how tiny and fast they are. Here's one from my backyard and my finger
for scale. And that was a jump in real time, it's nearly instantaneous. Going frame by frame
you can actually see how impossible they are to film with a normal camera. This frame is the only
one that captured any of the jump. The only thing you can see is this streak of motion blur that
shows the path that it traveled in the 1/60th of a second this image was being formed. In the
next frame the animal is totally gone. So, pretty much any recording that captures a springtail
jump in detail is capturing something new. Last year on this channel I published some
of my initial work describing their jumps, and off and on over the past year i've been
doing more of it and filming them in new ways. And i've got some really awesome footage to show
you. So, first, let's go back to that one that was jumping off of water. This is where I found
it: in a drainage ditch, next to a highway, near where I live. For a few weeks last spring
a semi-aquatic species covered this little pond, walking on the surface and leaping around
between the water and floating plant material. Here's what it looks like when they
launch themselves off the surface. This is the view at water level of one of them
about to jump. You can see the claws at the end of the leg sticking just below the surface. These
claws are hydrophilic and actually stick to the water giving the springtail's traction for moving
around on the surface. The spring-loaded tail, the furcula, on the other hand resists water and
doesn't break the surface tension when it's flung down. Instead it pulls the water surface down and
they seem to push off the indentation they make. Only the tips of the furcula briefly break the
surface while they spring up and off the water. In every off-water jump I captured,
the springtail launches itself forward at about a 45 degree angle while back flipping.
And the backflips are astonishingly fast. This one, when it takes off, is spinning backwards
at a rate of 290 flips per second. It lands face first, but most of its body repels water and
just floats away across the water surface. I was curious if jumps off of solid ground
would look the same for this species. So, here are the jumps of six individuals off
a solid platform. Some jump forward like they do off water, but some go backwards. Some jump
sideways, while others go up and off screen, more than 86 times their equivalent in body height
before spinning back down. As far as I can tell, this aquatic species seems a lot more coordinated
and controlled when they're jumping off water. Whether they jump off a solid ground or water,
it's all powered by a spring-loaded appendage tucked underneath their bodies called the
furcula. Last year, when I filmed them, it was mostly capturing stuff between three and
five thousand frames per second. And that's fast, but it wasn't fast enough to see exactly what the
furcula was doing when it catapults them off the ground. So, this past winter when more of the
soil dwelling springtails emerged in my yard, my goal was to film them closer and faster than
I had before to try to see, as well as I could, how their jumps are powered. So, here's some of
what I got. This jump and the ones that follow were captured by filming at 10,863 frames per
second. Even at this speed there are two points in the jump when the furcula is moving too fast to
see. The first is when it's released from the body to the ground. And this makes sense. That's the
point at which the stored energy of their internal spring system is released and they're starting
their jump. The second, though, is different. It's the point at which the tips of the furcula
lose contact with the ground. The tail seems to be in tension and, when it's released, it
flings back behind the body. To see either of these points clearer, though, I needed to film
faster. This is a sequence captured at 73,510 frames per second. At that speed, the camera I was
using would only record a black and white image that's just 240 pixels high. But that's enough to
see everything clearly and unobscured by motion blur. I don't think it's hyperbole to say no
one has ever seen a springtail like this before. The slap of the furcula against the ground, how it
bends at the midpoint where it splits into a fork, and the final fast backward flick
when it loses contact with the ground. I feel like it's not exactly right to say
i'm filming these animals in slow motion. I'm not using the camera to exaggerate or prolong
what they're doing. I'm just trying to see it! I'm trying to meet these animals at the time scale
at which they're behaving and that turns out to be really really hard. But, I think it's worth it
so we can see and appreciate these extraordinary creatures for what they are. Okay, let me end
this video by showing you one more sequence and it might be the luckiest thing i've ever
caught on video. This springtail is stuck on its back and it's going to use its tail to bounce
off the ground and right itself. That's not too special of a thing and not particularly hard to
capture. It spins a bunch of times, i'll speed up the playback through this part, but amazingly
it stays within the razor thin focal plane of the camera. And, when it comes back down, this is the
lucky part, the first thing to catch the ground is the furcula. When it does, amazingly it bends to
absorb the rotational energy of the springtail and brings it to a full stop. Then, it releases the
energy and throws the animal back into the air, spinning in the opposite direction. So, this
clip is a lucky accident that might be showing us something about the furcula itself acting
as a secondary spring during jumps. For now, that's my update on the springtail research. I'm
excited to work more on this project and i'm sure this won't be the last springtail video you'll
see on this channel. Thanks for watching this one!
