Springtails dance for World Soil Day

Today is #worldsoilday and Springtails are being celebrated as they are important to building healthy soil.

I first learned about these tiny arthropods when I saw them in my worm bin. They are not pests; they are part of the community in a healthy worm composting system and in soils around the world. Normally they are very difficult to see, but here they are magnified with a macro lens, so they become more visible. These superheros can walk on water and on the worm tea fertilizer they helped create. Don’t you wish you could experience what they do? This is what we are working on in our Belonging to Soil virtual reality project.

To see professional images of springtails, including a good variety of colors and species, check out this video featuring springtail photographer Andy Murray. Produced for World Soil Day by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations .

Amazing to learn that springtails colonized land 400 million years ago and worked alongside bacteria and fungi to create the first soils!

Riding on a flying ant

How did springtails get to populate every continent in the world? These wildly successful, abundant arthropods have no wings, they are too tiny to hop or crawl over long distances, and they dry out easily. So, they hitchhiked on flying insects. No humans have witnessed this event, but it has been discovered in the fossil record. Springtails are found entombed in amber, with their antennae clinging to the bodies of flying insects like termites and ants.

Distribution of Electrosminthuridia helibionta springtails on termite and ant hosts within 16-million-year-old Dominican amber: (A) amber specimen; (B) illustration showing the location of springtails on social insects. Arrow – inflow of the tree resin before consolidation. Scale bar – 0.5 cm. Image credit: N. Robin & P. Barden.

This scientific discovery inspired the first part of the story of “Belonging to Soil”. In VR, the participant rides on the back of a flying ant, experiencing what it might be like to be a springtail, traveling to new lands.

Luke Stephens, our character designer and animator, created the flying ant and springtail. Mayen McClain created this scene and the ant’s flightpath, while JT Thrash has programmed the behaviors, Josh Rodenberg designed the sound, and Shadrick Addy is helping us navigate the challenges of Unity and VR.  We are still working out how to jump without falling through the simulated world… if you watch the video to the end you’ll see this!

World Soil Day

Today we celebrate World Soil Day!

And we share this video from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, that explains why this ecosystem is so important and deserves a day of celebration.

“World Soil Day 2020 (#WorldSoilDay) and its campaign “Keep soil alive, Protect soil biodiversity” aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil biodiversity loss, increasing soil awareness and encouraging governments, organizations, communities and individuals around the world to commit to proactively improving soil health”


We are finding great inspiration in knowing more about the biodiversity underground. Springtails are in the collembolan family, which are in the mesofauna category of the soil community. This is based on their size (less than 2mm). Very hard to see and appreciate with the naked eye, which is another reason we are working to highlight them in our VR experience, Belonging to Soil.

Introduction video

Our team created a video to describe our Belonging to Soil project in process. We discuss our inspirations, the story, the tools, environment, characters, and interaction design.

We created it as part of Shadrick Addy’s larger presentation on his work and history, presented at a Hopkins Hybrid Arts Lab event in the Department of Design. It is very inspiring, check it out: Making Lemonade: My Design Life.