Physics can get real strange on the microscopic level. For tiny creatures living on this scale, these eccentricities are what allow them to thrive despite their size—including a worm that researchers dub as one of the “smallest, best jumpers in the world.”

For a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers investigated the odd physics of a “worm-charging mechanism,” which enables S. carpocapsae, a parasitic roundworm, to jump onto aerial prey using static electricity.

When the tiny worm, or nematode, senses an insect flying above, it curls into a loop and leaps as high as 25 times its body length, the “equivalent of a human being jumping higher than a 10-story building,” according to the researchers. During the leap, they can rotate up to 1,000 times per second.

“I believe these nematodes are some of the smallest, best jumpers in the world,” said Victor Ortega-Jiménez, study senior author and a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a release. “You might expect to find big discoveries in big animals, but the tiny ones also hold a lot of interesting secrets.”

“Using physics, we learned something new and interesting about an adaptive strategy in an organism,” added Ranjiangshang Ran, study co-lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University, in the release.

Static electricity in nature

Static electricity refers to the buildup of electric charge on a surface, which can lead to a quick, brief discharge when two surfaces are rubbed together. The team behind the new findings had previously conducted research on the role of static electricity, or electrostatics, in different survival strategies for wildlife.

For instance, ticks use the static electricity in an animal’s fur to levitate themselves into the animal, whereas spider webs electrostatically trap prey using similar principles. From this work, the researchers devised a method to control the electrical potential of tiny creatures, which enabled them to investigate the aerodynamics of nematodes.

A shocking hunter

For the experiment, the researchers noted how fruit flies—a common host for nematodes—generated hundreds of volts midair just by flapping their wings. To measure and control the exact voltage, the team glued tiny wires to the back of each fruit fly.

As for the nematodes, the team used moistened paper to create jump-inducing conditions for the worms, giving them a puff of air as “encouragement” before their leap, as the researchers noted in the press release. In some of the experiments, a tiny wind tunnel added a gentle breeze to the environment to replicate more natural conditions.

The jumps were recorded using a special high-speed camera, which captured the microscopic trajectories of the worms at 10,000 frames per second. Then, the team ran computational algorithms on possible factors for calculating worm trajectory, such as the overall voltage, launching velocity, or drag force—typical metrics for flying objects.

They found that a fruit fly generating a few hundred volts got a jumping worm to create the opposite charge. This subsequently increased the chances of the worm successfully landing on its prey. Without electrostatics, however, only one out of 19 worm trajectories made it to the insect.

Worms are really cool

To be clear, worms risk a lot while jumping, as the act itself expends a lot of energy and puts them at risk of predation or drying out midair. This suggests that “without electrostatics, it would make no sense for this jumping predatory behavior to have evolved in these worms,” Ran explained.

That said, things take a macabre turn when the nematodes latch onto their target—at least from the perspective of the new host. After landing, the worms enter an insect’s body through any natural opening. Then, it releases symbiotic bacteria that quickly kill the host, usually within 48 hours. The parasite continues to feed on the bacteria and the host postmortem, laying eggs in the cadaver.

Morbid, yes. But, as the new findings show, it’s full of fascinating intersections between biology and physics!