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 ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The springtail is a tiny, fascinating semiaquatic invertebrate ...

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of ...

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 ...

Globular springtails (Dicyrtomina minuta) are small bugs about five millimetres long that can be seen crawling through leaf litter and garden soil. While they do not have wings and cannot fly, they ...

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 ...