[HN Gopher] Insect Has Gears in Its Legs (2013)
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Insect Has Gears in Its Legs (2013)
Author : jensgk
Score : 68 points
Date : 2021-03-20 09:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| jeffgreco wrote:
| > Wait! It gets better. These gears are training wheels!
|
| This is very cool, helps the young bugs coordinate both legs for
| jumping before letting them lose the bumps and graduate to
| precision jumping.
| king_magic wrote:
| Immediately stopped reading & flagged this after the "enter your
| email address to keep reading" dark pattern pop up appeared.
|
| Nothing will ever change if we keep rewarding this kind of
| behavior.
| 1000mA wrote:
| I also stopped reading at email prompt
| StavrosK wrote:
| Holy hell, their consent popup has "accept all" and "learn
| more", if you click the latter you see some checkboxes and an
| "accept all" button, but no "confirm" or "reject all". Only
| after you try to close the popup with the X does the "confirm"
| button appear.
|
| Fuck this site, it should be fined.
| ufmace wrote:
| Ditto. It's crazy that once-trusted names like National
| Geographic are doing these kinds of things.
| jhncls wrote:
| M.C. Escher already knew about a curl-up beetle as documented in
| 1951.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl-up [1]:
| https://www.instructables.com/Articulated-MC-Escher-Curl-up-...
| xwdv wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible for a creature to have axles and some
| kind of differential?
| tootie wrote:
| This is video is really aimed at kids but gives some good
| explanation of why it's likely impossible:
| https://youtu.be/YkS1U5lfSRw
|
| The "gears" on this insect are basically intersecting teeth on
| two otherwise normal leg parts. Evolving an axle or any other
| free spinning part would require disconnected parts. The
| external parts would be cut off from any metabolic functions of
| the main body. Nothing remotely like that has ever evolved
| before so it would be nigh impossible.
| Conlectus wrote:
| It seems to me this "impossibility" might be an artifact of
| definition: if some system contains disjoint parts, we no
| longer call it "an animal".
|
| Colonial animals are the edge case here. Most would be
| hesitant to say an ant colony is "an animal", but are happy
| to refer to a Portuguese Man 'o' War as such, despite also
| being a colony.
| curryst wrote:
| All members of a colonial animal are genetically identical,
| which I believe is why a man of war is an animal but an ant
| colony is a society. I don't think ants are genetically
| identical, although I'm not certain.
|
| Man o Wars are also not disjoint. They have specialized
| cells, but I believe share nutrition among the non-feeding
| cells. A truly disjoint creature would need a metabolic
| system on both sides of the disjoint, a separate nervous
| system, and perhaps most difficult, a way to pass messages
| across the disjoint quickly enough to be useful (aka
| electric impulse).
|
| At a certain point, I think it starts becoming dubious
| whether it's a single creature. Even if they're genetically
| identical, they start to look more like twins than a
| colonial creature.
| Tossito190 wrote:
| Human teeth, hair. There's plenty of possibilities there.
| Especially with keratin. Nails are plenty robust. The real
| question is how do you motivate those disconnected components
| to perform work efficiently, but with gears like those in the
| OP you could hypothetically build a ratcheting system.
| merricksb wrote:
| https://archive.md/ytYYX
| mikewarot wrote:
| Duplicate of this thread (subject wise) 31 days ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26174135
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Yes it has gears, but not a multi speed gear box.
| salgernon wrote:
| This[1] fascinating page was posted about a year ago[2]:
|
| [1] https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ [2]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22310813
| teddyh wrote:
| Phenomenon discussed here on HN _8 years ago_ :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6376191 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8212984
| surround wrote:
| The article requires you to enter an email address to continue
| reading. Submitting a fake address works just fine.
| [deleted]
| miked85 wrote:
| I am unable to do that, possibly because I am using an
| adblocker/pihole. Sites like this are toxic.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| Just use your browser's "reader mode". Seems to get around this
| style of popup pretty easily (at least on safari and usually
| Firefox too).
| miked85 wrote:
| Normally I do that - in this case, pictures are useful
| though.
| melenaboija wrote:
| It seems to me there is still so much to learn from nature.
|
| Something that is impressive to me is how insects manage energy,
| tiny things moving or flying around and processing information
| for hours with I don't know what source and storage for it.
|
| I am obviously a total ignorant in physics and biology.
| eointierney wrote:
| You might enjoy "There's plenty of room at the bottom" by
| Feynman.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| ATP synthase.
|
| It is a protein that has a stator like in a motor that rotates
| in phases when it combines ADP and phosphate to make ATP.
|
| Amazing.
| mushishi wrote:
| I was coming to say the same thing. Here's a short animated
| video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpzp4RDGJI
| csomar wrote:
| Actually it's the human bodies that are quite wasteful (so are
| humans themselves). Many big animals can keep going without
| food for months. And it's not just their oily fat reserves,
| they are much more efficient with energy.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Humans are just better at other things. Like problem solving.
| A big brain takes a lot of energy.
|
| Plus human bodies aren't all that terrible:
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Persistence_hunting
| Klinky wrote:
| The human body is good at being flexible and adapting to a
| wide variety of environments. You see it in a lot of areas of
| life, rigid efficiencies and flexible inefficiencies. Being
| more flexible has its costs and benefits. Humans are very
| much "jack of all trades, master of none".
| agumonkey wrote:
| Whenever you're into microelectronics and robotics you cannot
| not be amazed by insects, those things are so ridiculously
| fantastic yet completely mundane (or annoying) for most of the
| world.
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