Hello and welcome to another Fun Fact From Flora ,

Today we are going to have a look at a pretty badass beetle called the water lily beetle ( Galerucella nymphaeae if you’re feeling classy).

Now it goes about its business by skimming along the top of the water like a waterskiier, and it does it SO FAST that it appears to vanish. They reach speeds of up to 0.5m per second. That might not SOUND super impressive but let me tell you this

If you scaled that speed up to the size of a human — they would be travelling at about 500km/h.

HOW BADASS IS THAT?!

But how do they do it?! I hear you cry

Luckily, I have all the answers.

What the beetle does is it lifts its middle legs upand angles its body upwards. It then flaps its wings SUPER VIGOROUSLY and so launches itself horizontally across the water.

They move so fast that they interact with the ripples generated by their own motion. This is actually not ideal because it increases the drag and causes quite a bumpy ride. The lead researcher of the paper described it gloriously. He said:

It’s as if surface tension acts as a pogo stick that the beetle is jumping on.

Fucking poetry.

They have some other adaptations that help with their speedy waterskiing. They have stronger wings compared to flying insects (it takes more energy to skim on water than to fly through air) and they have very cool legs.

The legs are covered with tiny hairs that are water repellent, whilst there is a claw at the tip of their legs that is hydrophilic , which essentially allows them to pin themselves to the surface of the water.

Have a watch of them doing it in slow mo. It’s the coolest fuckingthing.

All my nerdy love,

Flora

Here’s your animal GIF — a bit grainy but truly phenomenal