Dr. Adrian Smith is best known for this slow motion study of insect species and these skills were perfect for a detailed study of insects known as “springtails”. They usually move so fast that normal cameras, like the human eye, cannot perceive their movement.
Springtails, or Collembola Sminthurides aquaticus, are semi-aquatic spherical insects that are very small and move incredibly quickly. Because of this, the amount of research that had been done on them was extremely limited. Dr. Smith says he was on a mission to capture and see what the little insects are doing at a level of detail that no one had tried before.
Smith shows that the tiny insects “jump” by drifting off the surface and repeating repetitively at breakneck speed. When taking a picture with a normal camera, at most a blur is visible between the images, which hardly shows that the insect is turning around, but does not show any other details. It takes a very fast frame rate to see more.
That spiraling blur across Smith’s finger is all a normal camera can do to capture the movement of a springtail.
Even on his first attempt last year to take pictures with a camera that can take 6,000 frames per second, Dr. Smith found that such a frame rate was still not fast enough to take a detailed look at how exactly the insects are able to propel themselves with such images.
In the video above, Dr. Smith states that he believes that, based on his tests and records, the insects have the most control when they are on the water rather than on dry land. On the water, on which they can walk thanks to water-repellent limbs that take advantage of surface tension, springtails can shoot themselves forward at an angle of about 45 degrees with a spring-loaded limb hidden under their bodies known as fucula. When they weren’t on the water, the insects’ trajectory was much less predictable. Some flew forward, some backward, and some straight into the air.
When shooting at over 10,000 frames per second, more is revealed, but Dr. Smith wasn’t satisfied: there were two points that were still moving too fast to get a detailed picture of what exactly was happening.
To get these details, Dr. Smith his frame rate.
“It took me through some models of high-speed phantom cameras to resolve the motion that drives their jumps, but by filming them at over 73,000 frames per second, I think I got it,” he tells PetaPixel.
At this speed, his camera could only record in black and white and only capture an image area with a height of 240 pixels. It wasn’t much resolution, but it was enough to see everything clearly, unobstructed by motion blur.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say no one has seen a springtail like this,” says Smith. “I think it’s not exactly right to say that I am filming these animals in slow motion. I don’t use the camera to exaggerate or extend what they do: I’m just trying to see it. I try to meet these animals during the time they are behaving and that turns out to be very, very difficult. “
If you want to know more about Dr. Adrian Smith, be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel. You can also follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Credit: Photos courtesy of Dr. Adrian Smith and used with permission.
