Nice idea.
Also, what did you change from the no-body mite to the body-but-all-scrunched-up-mite?
It was something with parenting everything to the detail32 empty shape.
And what Jimmg said about the root.dsq file seems to be true, because when I redid the root animation, I get this:

I just need to fine-tune the animation and script and then it should be finished :D
edit: hey, Jimmg, want to be a beta tester?