Baby Praying Mantis Makes Death-Defying Leap Into Air

<p> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wouldpkr/7157958255/sizes/m/">wouldpkr/flickr/cc by 2.0</a><span></span> </p>
<p> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wouldpkr/7157958255/sizes/m/">wouldpkr/flickr/cc by 2.0</a><span></span> </p>

Baby praying mantises execute totally gnarly jumps with blistering speed:

This jump actually took less than one-tenth of a second. (Gregory Sutton/YouTube)

These little insects don't use wings, but rely on impressive rotational skills - equivalent to spinning their bodies around two-and-a-half times in a second - to almost always stick the landing.

"This is akin to asking an ice skater who is rotating at the same speed as these mantises to stop suddenly and accurately to face a specific direction," Malcolm Burrows of the University of Cambridge said in a press release accompanying a report published in the journal Current Biology.

click to play video

Mantises aren't the only ones with great aerial maneuvers - dragonflies in slo-mo look pretty impressive, too.