Researchers discovered evidence that nature came up with the idea for interlocking gears before we did.
A jumping European garden insect was found to have "hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing 'teeth' that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronize the animal's legs when it launches into a jump," a University of Cambridge press release reported.
The finding marks the first "natural gear" ever discovered. Scientists were able to capture the mechanism in action on camera and analyze it.
"We usually think of gears as something that we see in human designed machinery, but we've found that that is only because we didn't look hard enough," co-author Gregory Sutton, now at the University of Bristol, said. "These gears are not designed; they are evolved - representing high speed and precision machinery evolved for synchronization in the animal world."
The gears are only present during the insect's juvenile "nymph" stage, and disappear in adulthood. Researchers are not sure why this is, but it could be because the mechanism is too fragile to meet the adult's needs.
The team found the "gears" (called Issus) were almost identical to the man-made ones seen on a bicycle. The gear teeth connect smoothly to a corresponding gear strip.
"The gear teeth on the opposing hind-legs lock together like those in a car gear-box, ensuring almost complete synchronicity in leg movement - the legs always move within 30 'microseconds' of each other, with one microsecond equal to a millionth of a second," the press release reported.
Without these "gears" the insect would not be able to make the high-powered jumps it relies on for swift movement.
"This precise synchronisation would be impossible to achieve through a nervous system, as neural impulses would take far too long for the extraordinarily tight coordination required," lead author Professor Malcolm Burrows, from Cambridge's Department of Zoology, said. "By developing mechanical gears, the Issus can just send nerve signals to its muscles to produce roughly the same amount of force - then if one leg starts to propel the jump the gears will interlock, creating absolute synchronicity."n
