EAT YOUR HEART OUT, CARL LEWIS

Froghopper Bug Crowned "World's Greatest Leaper" (John Roach, July 30, 2003, National Geographic News)

A sap-sucking bug that coats plants with wads of foamy spit has been crowned the insect world's greatest leaper. It has more jumping prowess than fleas, out hops the springiest grasshoppers, and clears the high bar more quickly than bush crickets.

Philaenus spumarius, commonly known as a froghopper or spittle bug, is a mere 0.2 inches (6 millimeters) long, but employs a novel catapult mechanism to launch itself upwards of 28 inches (70 centimeters) into the air.

"They do jump a heck of a long way," said Malcolm Burrows, a neurobiologist in the zoology department at the University of Cambridge in England. [...]

What he found was an insect that accelerates from the ground with a force that is 400 times greater than gravity. For the sake of comparison, we humans jump with a force that is two to three times that of gravity.

"[The froghopper] experiences something like 400 g's," said Burrows,whose research on the froghopper appears in the July 31 issue of the
journal Nature. "That's a lot. We pass out when we experience about 5g's." Merriam-Webster defines g as a unit of force equal to the force
exerted by gravity on a body at rest and used to indicate the force to which a body is subjected when accelerated.

Lord love British understatement. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2003 9:27 AM