sciencenewsNo, 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.
No known muscle can generate anywhere near the power needed to launch a flea so far, Sutton says. In the late 1960s, researchers discovered that the bugs aren’t jumping with just their muscles. Instead, they spring. Before fleas launch, they store energy in a naturally springy protein hidden away in their bodies called resilin, then release it in one big bound.
But where the spring power goes from there wasn’t clear. One camp said the force moves down to the knees, the other said the feet. “They argued about it,” Sutton says, and for years the technology didn’t exist to put the matter to rest.
It did, however, for Sutton and biologist Malcolm Burrows. With a little “flea wrangling,” the researchers were able to collect 51 slo-mo clips of leaping hedgehog fleas.
The St. Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital Trust in Buckinghamshire, England, donated the fleas right off the backs of hedgehogs, the researchers note. The team also drew up mathematical models to simulate bug leaps on paper and eyed flea anatomy up-close using a scanning electron microscope.
Read more at Wired
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