A tiny insect preserved in 99-million-year-old amber carried a feeding organ unlike almost anything alive today: a flexible, folded hose nearly twice as long as its own body. Researchers at Tel Aviv University named the new species Cretodorus noonoo, after Noo-Noo, the vacuum cleaner with a long, bendy hose from the children's TV series Teletubbies, according to a university release on EurekAlert.

The species belongs to Neazoniidae, an extinct family related to modern planthoppers. The team examined 13 fossils from Kachin amber in Myanmar, using micro-CT scanning to study the insects in three dimensions.

The find matters because it hints that Cretaceous forests offered feeding opportunities that no longer exist. That conclusion is drawn from anatomy, not from watching the animals feed, and the researchers are careful to say so.

A Bendy Straw Built From Folds

The insect's mouthparts stretched nearly twice the length of its body, according to the study published in the journal Insects by Dolev Fabrikant, Yanzhe Fu and Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, Archaeology Magazine reported.

The surface of the organ is covered in dense transverse folds, like the ridges on a bendy drinking straw or an accordion. Those folds would have let the long organ bend without collapsing, much as the corrugated hose on a vacuum cleaner can curve without kinking.

Amber made the detail possible. Tree resin that trapped the insects hardened over millions of years, preserving their bodies in three dimensions. Micro-CT scanning, which uses X-rays to build a digital model slice by slice, let the team examine the folded organ inside the amber without cutting or damaging the specimens.

Having 13 fossils, rather than one, also gave the researchers more confidence. They could compare the organ across multiple individuals and see that the long hose was a consistent feature of the group rather than a distortion in a single specimen.

The work was a collaboration between Tel Aviv University's School of Zoology and Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and Yanzhe Fu of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Modern planthoppers feed with piercing-and-sucking mouthparts that tap plant fluids. C. noonoo appears to have used the same basic approach, but with an extended, flexible delivery system unlike that of its living relatives.

Grooved Lobes That May Have Anchored the Tip

At the end of the organ sit two grooved lobes. The researchers propose that these lobes opened during feeding and helped anchor the mouthpart to the walls of a crack, "much like a wall plug expanding inside a drilled hole," according to the Tel Aviv University release.

Once braced, the insect could guide its piercing stylets deeper toward fluid-carrying tissues inside the tree. The likely target was sap in vascular tissue beneath thick bark, which would have been out of reach for insects with short mouthparts.

Knowridge reported that the team found no convincing pollen on the insects' bodies, which argues against the idea that the long organ was used to sip nectar from flowers the way some long-tongued insects do. Butterflies also have flexible feeding tubes, but theirs are built for drinking nectar rather than piercing plant tissue, so the resemblance is only skin-deep.

Reading Behavior From Structure

The feeding behavior is an inference. Fossils preserve shape far better than action, and Knowridge noted that the proposed feeding sequence cannot be observed directly. The anchoring role of the lobes and the bark-crack target are interpretations based on the organ's form and on how similar structures work in other insects.

Some broader ideas remain even more tentative. The suggestion that thick, fire-resistant bark in Cretaceous forests may have favored such long probes is described as a hypothesis rather than a demonstrated cause.

Kachin amber also carries a well-known ethical concern. Amber mining in Myanmar's Kachin State has been linked to armed conflict, and some paleontology journals and societies have restricted publication of research on specimens acquired after 2017. Readers and researchers increasingly ask how specimens were sourced, a question this release does not address.

Clues to Lost Cretaceous Forests

The researchers note that long or corrugated feeding structures appeared in several unrelated insect groups during the Cretaceous, including some long-proboscid scorpionflies. When different lineages evolve similar tools independently, a process called convergent evolution, it often signals a shared opportunity in the environment.

Davranoglou said the pattern points to a different world. Ancient forests "created ecological conditions and opportunities very different from those we know today," he said in the release.

Kachin amber dates to the middle of the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs dominated the land and flowering plants were beginning to spread through forests still rich in conifers. Insects living in those mixed forests faced trees, bark and resins that differ from the ones planthoppers feed on today.

Most of those long-mouthed insect lineages later disappeared. Their loss may reflect changes in forests, plant chemistry or climate over tens of millions of years, though the study does not identify a cause.

Nature World News previously reported on another amber fossil that revealed convergent evolution in a Cretaceous true bug. Together, such finds show how amber preserves anatomy in detail fine enough to reconstruct how insects lived.

For readers, the takeaway is a lesson in how paleontologists work: the organ is real and measured, while how the animal used it is a carefully reasoned interpretation. The bottom line: a 99-million-year-old planthopper with a hose-like mouth suggests Cretaceous trees supported feeding strategies that have almost vanished, and future fossils may test whether the bark-crack idea holds.

What Readers Want to Know

What is Cretodorus noonoo?

It is a newly described 99-million-year-old insect from an extinct planthopper family, preserved in Kachin amber from Myanmar.

Why is it named after Noo-Noo?

Its long, flexible feeding organ resembles the hose of Noo-Noo, the vacuum cleaner character from Teletubbies.

How long was its feeding organ?

Nearly twice the length of its body, covered in folds that let it bend without collapsing.

What did it eat?

Researchers think it probed bark cracks to reach tree sap, but this is inferred from anatomy, not observed.

What did the grooved lobes do?

The team proposes they opened to anchor the tip inside a crack, like a wall plug expanding in a drilled hole.

What does this reveal about ancient forests?

Similar long feeding structures evolved in unrelated Cretaceous insects, suggesting forests then offered feeding opportunities that no longer exist.