Why Scientists Say This Backflipping Bug Is Sonic The Hedgehog IRL

Composite image of a globular springtail jumping. DR. ADRIAN SMITH VIA SWNS. “> 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”…

Zenger StaffAug 30, 20244 min read

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Composite image of a globular springtail jumping. DR. ADRIAN SMITH VIA SWNS.

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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 than one-hundredth of a second.

The hexapod, which is usually only a couple of millimeters in body length, can reach an astonishing rotational rate of 368 flips per second.

American researchers discovered the globular springtail backflips into the air, spinning to over 60 times its body height in the blink of an eye.

The new study, published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, features the first in-depth look at its jumping prowess using state-of-the-art camera technology

Researchers explained that the globular springtails don’t fly, bite, or sting, so rely on their amazing jumping prowess to avoid predators.

They are so good and so quick that, to the naked eye, they seem to vanish entirely when they take off.

Study corresponding author Dr. Adrian Smith said: “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.”

Dr. Smith, research assistant professor of biology at North Carolina State University, explained that finding the globular springtails was easy enough as they’re all around us.

The ones in this study are usually out from December until March.

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Dr. Smith “recruited” his research subjects by sifting through leaf litter from his own backyard.

He said: “Globular springtails jump so fast that you can’t see it in real-time.

“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 vapor trail curlicues left behind where it flipped through the one frame.”

Dr. Smith solved the problem by using cameras that shoot 40,000 frames per second.

He urged the springtails to jump by shining a light on them or lightly prodding them with an artist’s paintbrush.

Dr. Smith was then able to look at how they took off, how fast and far they went, and how they landed.

He explained that the bugs 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, Dr. Smith says the furca flips down and the forked tip pushes against the ground, launching them into a series of “insanely fast” backflips.

He said: “It only takes a globular springtail one-thousandth of a second to backflip off the ground and they can reach a peak rate of 368 rotations per second.

“They accelerate their bodies into a jump at about the same rate as a flea, but on top of that, they spin.

“No other animal on earth does a backflip faster than a globular springtail.”

He says the springtails were also able to launch themselves over 60 millimeters (2.36 inches) into the air – more than 60 times their height.

Study co-author Dr. Jacob Harrison, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said: “They can lean into a jump and go slightly sideways, but when launching from a flat surface, they mostly travel up and backward, never forward.

“Their inability to jump forward was an indication to us that jumping is primarily a means to escape danger, rather than a form of general locomotion.”

Landing was found in two styles: uncontrolled and anchored.

Dr. Smith explained that globular springtails have a sticky forked tube they can evert – or push out of their bodies – to grapple a surface or halt their momentum, but he observed that bouncing and tumbling to a stop was just as common as anchored landings.

He said: “This is the first time anyone has done a complete description of the globular springtail’s jumping performance measures, and what they do is almost impossibly spectacular.”

Dr. Smith added: “This is a great example of how we can find incredible, and largely undescribed, organisms living all around us.”

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