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With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage—their strange, shark-fin teeth interlocking cleanly like a zipper. And then, faster than you can blink, think, or see with the naked eye, the entire thing is gone. In 2 milliseconds it has bulleted skyward, accelerating at nearly 400 g's—a rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand. At top speed the jumper breaks 8 mph—quite a feat considering its body is less than one-tenth of an inch long.
alt="Issus" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizZKf7hq9CPwYxeVJUEy3COu467zB-oPZ3phuQWsoZb7n5kfPnQ_ELum8YhwR_2Gbmy7tVSei4DD7VPQjQRt9zXodO2ZMClUbxk2v9k1p0G86Ln6m-LRx2c6FDeK0gOL7YtV54og7HAhNN/s1600/Issus.jpg" title="Issus">This miniature marvel is an adolescent issus, a kind of planthopper insect and one of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom. As a duo of researchers in the U.K. report today in the journal Science, the issus also the first living creature ever discovered to sport a functioning gear. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do," says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations."
Source: Here
Source: Here
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