When your very survival stands on a knife-edge, sometimes it’s not how big you are that matters, but how easily you can step from one world to the next.

At the very topmost layer of the waves, in the first few millimetres of the ocean where the sky meets water, life teems. With energy readily available from the sun, the edge between the worlds of the airborne and the aquatic thrives with everything from animal larvae and algae to bacteria and plankton – some of which have the ability to leave the water altogether and take flight through the air.

Like flying fish and even some species of flying squid, one brightly-coloured group of plankton, in particular, have officially been observed using the tactic to escape from predators. While the concept of flying copepods first appeared over 100 years ago, it was originally thought that they were using the shock of re-entry into the water to help them moult and shed their old shells. It wasn’t until 2012 that the truth was discovered and captured on film at the University of Texas.

Using a high-speed camera both in the wild and in the lab, scientists finally confirmed that the plankton was deliberately kicking back with their legs, pulling their antennae back, and leaving the water to escape predators like mullet. Because of the comparative strength of the surface tension that they had to overcome due to their size, the plankton was forced to expend surprisingly large amounts of energy to break free of the water and leap further than the fish could actually see. But so efficient was the tactic that to the fish, it appeared as though their prey had simply vanished altogether.

The next step for scientists is to determine whether the plankton has evolved any special physical adaptations to help them accomplish the feat, but no matter what they discover, it’s clear that these flying “fleas” of the oceans pack a lot of craftiness into a tiny package.