The centre of mass of the locust is located above the coxa joint on the abdomen (Bennet-Clark 1975 (link)). The abdomen of the locust is flexible and can be moved through contraction of the dorso-longitudinal muscles (Baader 1990 (link)). After take-off and during flight, flexion of the abdomen has been shown to create a counter torque to reduce angular rotation (Cofer et al. 2010 (link)). However, in this study we only focus on the first 10 ms of the jump after take-off, during which, angular rotation was not seen to be corrected through movements of the abdomen (see Fig. 1 for an example). Therefore, the locusts in this study were modelled as a rigid uniform rod (Fig. 1c). This model allows us to calculate the inertia (Eq. 6) of the locust using the standard equation of a uniform rod rotating about its centre (Idema 2018 ).
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