High-speed cameras have captured in vivid detail how springtails flip themselves into the air, showing that they spin faster than any animal ever recorded.

Springtails, a type of arthropod in a group related to insects, are millimetres long and found in most places on Earth.

True to their name, the animals use a tail-like appendage called a furca, which folds beneath their bodies, to spring off the ground. The furca unfolds in a flash to catapult the creatures into the air, allowing them to evade predators.

at North Carolina State University sifted through leaf litter in his backyard to collect mottled orange and brown, round-bodied Dicyrtomina minuta.

“I brought them in the lab and filmed them, and I was amazed at what they did,” says Smith.

Working with at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Smith captured dozens of springtail vaults using high-speed cameras. To prompt the arthropods to flip, the researchers put them under a bright light and sometimes gave them a prod with a small paintbrush.

Each jump flung the minuscule acrobats up to 80 body lengths away on an arcing, backward trajectory. The rate of springtails’ spinning surpassed all other animals that have been studied — up to 368 rotations per second.

Smith and Harrison saw that springtails had two ways of landing: an uncontrolled bounce and tumble or an anchored stop made possible by an organ called a collophore, a sticky tube that can attach to the ground.

The scientists are continuing to explore the mechanics of springtail leaps for engineering inspiration. They are also studying the forward flips of plant lice, another arthropod that has evolved rapid escape jumps.

People might think that everything in nature is described and known, says Smith, but this isn’t so. “There’s so many things that are right there in and amongst us that are incredible.”

African penguins may identify their partners by the patterns of spots the birds sport on their chests. This is the first time researchers have pinned down a feature that any bird uses for visual recognition.

The dots on African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) appear when they are 3 to 5 months old. The birds moult every year, and the dots reappear in the same position when the new plumage emerges, says who was at the University of Turin, Italy, during this project.

In 2021, Baciadonna and his colleagues found that these penguins tune in to both the vocal calls and visual features of their colony mates. But it wasn’t clear if looks alone were enough.

Now, the researchers have tested 12 birds at a zoo near Rome by tracking the animals’ responses to life-size images of other African penguins.

Individuals of this species form lifelong pair bonds, and they were found to spend more time gazing at a picture of their partner than they did a picture of a different familiar penguin. This was true even when the heads on the penguin pictures were obscured.

When the test subjects encountered two images of their partner, one of which had the spots artificially removed, they preferred the dappled image. But the preference for their partner disappeared when the birds were presented with unspeckled versions of both their mate and a different bird. Together, the results suggest that the animals clue into these spots.

The ability to discriminate a mate visually could be vital when penguins are trying to find their nest in a large, loud and crowded colony, says Baciadonna. It isn’t clear whether other penguins, particularly those that roam instead of nest, possess this skill.

“Given how goofy penguins can seem – almost stumbling over their feet as they walk, for example – the birds may not seem like they are all that bright, says Baciadonna. “But we showed in these two or three experiments that actually they are quite complicated and complex,” he says. “They’re also clever.”