A remarkable video has emerged of a praying mantis jumping in super-slow motion.

The footage, captured on a high-speed camera at Cambridge University, UK, shows the insect leaping onto a target in 1000 frames per second.

The experiment was conducted as part of a study into the movements of insects at high speed by researchers Malcolm Burrows, Marina Doroshenko, Darron Cullen, and Gregory Sutton.

Writing online about the experiment, Sutton said "the lab studies the high-speed movements of jumping insects. We use these motions as examples to show us how nature manages to control extremely fast movements. The video was taken in order to watch the movements insects make when jumping to targets. This is a very very hard thing for a small insect to do, controlling spin in mid air gets difficult when an animal is small - and we had originally thought that jumping insects were unable to control the spin. Movies of the Mantis, however, showed that they were not only able to control the spin, they were able to do it at high speeds. This is the first example of such high speed rotational control seen in such a small animal."

A remarkable video has emerged of a praying mantis jumping in super-slow motion.

The footage, captured on a high-speed camera at Cambridge University, UK, shows the insect leaping onto a target in 1000 frames per second.

The experiment was conducted as part of a study into the movements of insects at high speed by researchers Malcolm Burrows, Marina Doroshenko, Darron Cullen, and Gregory Sutton.

Writing online about the experiment, Sutton said "the lab studies the high-speed movements of jumping insects. We use these motions as examples to show us how nature manages to control extremely fast movements. The video was taken in order to watch the movements insects make when jumping to targets. This is a very very hard thing for a small insect to do, controlling spin in mid air gets difficult when an animal is small - and we had originally thought that jumping insects were unable to control the spin. Movies of the Mantis, however, showed that they were not only able to control the spin, they were able to do it at high speeds. This is the first example of such high speed rotational control seen in such a small animal."