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 ...

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists have made a walking, jumping robot that pushes the ...

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 ...

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these ...

Michigan's wet, cold weather is revealing springtails, ancient arthropods typically found on snow piles during the winter. The tiny "bugs" are known for their haphazard jumping, which has earned them ...

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 in ...

You may not know what a springtail is but man, those little things can jump! Scientists have now copied the creatures' jumping mechanism in a small robot that could one day explore places that people ...

This winter has brought plenty of cold weather and snow, but the recent warm spell gives hope that spring is coming. Warming weather also brings out one of the most common land insects in our area, ...

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 ...

Springtails look chaotic to the untrained eye. Whether on a balmy pond or melting snow, the miniscule creatures are, true to their name, constantly springing up from the surface in a cloud of ...