These beetles waterski, scientists say. How do they do it?

[HuckleB]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0303/These-beetles-waterski-scientists-say.-How-do-they-do-it

"If you watch a waterlily leaf beetle hanging out on the surface of a pond, you might see it seemingly disappear and then reappear somewhere else. That may not seem all that strange for a flying insect, but a mysterious line of ripples hints otherwise.

The little beetle isn't flying from place to place precisely as you might think. It's actually moving as if waterskiing, flying straight over the pond with its feet still touching the surface of the water.

Curious about how the waterlily beetles do it, scientists used high speed video cameras to take a closer look. They describe their findings in a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"It blows your mind away when you look at these things," Manu Prakash, who runs the lab at Stanford University that conducted this study, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.

..."

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Cool video at the link.

[Arazi]

1. Very cool!

[valerief]

2. The Ekranoplan is pretty cool, too.

[HuckleB]

3. Indeed, it is!

[yourpaljoey]

4. The pilot looks like a human replica made of plastic... 28-32 seconds in

What became of this? Way cool.

[valerief]

6. Yeah. Weird Star Trekkish head. Vulcan or something.

I think I read Russia ditched this when they ran out of money or something.

[Laffy Kat]

5. My kitteh is sitting on my shoulders...

She certainly enjoyed watching the video!

[HuckleB]

7. Awesome! -eom-