A recently discovered South African cockroach leaps through the air like a missile, traversing nearly 50 times its body length with every hop.
Called a leaproach, the insect only infrequently scuttles like a regular roach. The rest of the time it uses two powerful hind legs with spring-loaded knees to rocket above fields of sedge grass.
“Other cockroaches that live in the same environment haven’t bothered to evolve an ability to jump, but this small cockroach has quite literally made the leap,” said zoologist Mike Picker of the University of Cape Town, leader of a Dec. 6 Biology Letters study detailing the leaproach’s hopping mechanics.
“It has got an absolutely bizarre body design that evolved around a leaping form of locomotion,” he said.
A decades-old debate about how the animal kingdom’s most renowned jumper jumps appears to be settled.
No, not rabbits or frogs. Fleas.
Using new tools like high-speed video, researchers with the University of Cambridge in England have shown that fleas take off from their tibia and tarsi — the insect equivalent of feet — and not their trochantera, or knees. The researchers report their conclusion in the March 1 Journal of Experimental Biology.
Regardless of how fleas do it, the insects have always been famous jumpers, says study co-author Gregory Sutton. “There are even fairy tales that talk about how magnificent fleas are at jumping,” he says. And it’s not surprising: Fleas jump far. Some fleas — only a few millimeters long — can jump well over 10 centimeters, according to one study. Adult hedgehog fleas (Archaeopsyllus erinacei) go from resting to midair in about 1 millisecond, says Sutton, a mechanical engineer at Cambridge.
Kids, if I EVER catch you doing this you will be grounded for like 2 months. That means no Wii and no internet. GROUNDED.
Which one of these guys was the first to come up with this crazy idea. “I will give you 10 rubles if you jump off the building into the snow.” Really though, this seems so crazy – is it even real? First assumption is that it is indeed real. However, I can do a simple video analysis just to check. (of course using the best free video analysis tool – Tracker Video)