Baby Praying Mantises Perform Spectacular Leaps by Harnessing Mid-Air Spin

Baby praying mantises can perform some spectacular leaps. Now, scientists have used high-speed video to capture some of these amazing jumps and show that instead of spinning out of control while airborne, these insects create and control angular momentum at extraordinary speeds for precise landings.

The smaller you are, the harder it is not to spin out of control when you jump. This is due to the fact that miniscule errors in propulsive force can cause uncontrolled spinning. In fact, tiny insects such as fleas, leafhoppers and grasshoppers spin out of control while jumping.

Yet it seems like praying mantises don't spin out of control Instead, they harness the spinning motion in order to jump with accuracy.

In this case, the scientists used a thin black rod distant from a small platform on which the mantises sat as a target for them to jump at. The scientists recorded the jumps with high-speed video.

During the jumps, the baby mantises rotated their legs and abdomen simultaneously yet in varying directions; they shifted clockwise and anti-clockwise between these body parts in midair to control angular momentum, or spin. This allowed them to shift their body in the air to precisely align themselves with the target on which they chose to land.

What's more astonishing is the speed at which the baby mantises managed this feat. An entire jump, from take-off to landing, lasted about 80 milliseconds. That's faster than the blink of a human eye.

"We had assumed spin was bad, but we were wrong-juvenile mantises deliberately create spin and harness it in mid-air to rotate their bodies to land on a target," said Malcolm Burrows, one of the researchers, in a news release. "As far as we can tell, these insects are controlling every step of the jump.  There is no uncontrolled step followed by compensation, which is what we initially thought."

The findings don't just reveal more about these insects, though. They could also be useful for robots. Scientists could use similar mechanics to create small robots with similar mobility.

"For small robots, flying is energetically expensive, and walking is slow," said Gregory Sutton, one of the researchers. "Jumping makes sense-but controlling the spin in jumping robots is an almost intractable problem. The juvenile mantis is a natural example of a mechanical set-up that would solve this."

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

You can check out the baby mantises jumping for yourself here.

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