Tag Archives: jumping
Jumping champs
In the Master volunteer classes I teach every year on entomology, I race through so many different kinds of insects that I fear I do all a disservice. One group I always mention in passing are the different kinds of homopterous insects. This group includes the “hopper” families: treehoppers, leafhoppers, planthoppers and froghoppers. These are all plant-sap feeding insects that produce honeydew. One of the things I mention in class about some of these is that their droppings (excrement) are often so abundant that you can feel them… Read More →
Its the flea’s knees…or not
In this NPR Science Friday video, scientists Greg Sutton and Malcolm Burrows, of the University of Cambridge, filmed fleas jumping. They then sorted through different theories of how they jumped and concluded that fleas use their feet and not knees to push off the ground and jump on your cat or your dog. The high speed photography is amazing and I especially liked the slo-mo- photography of a flea’s jump compared to the blink of a human eye. An adult flea can jump approximately 13 inches, a little… Read More →