Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sloth's evolutionary advantage is that they are so fucking cool.
Did you do that on purpose?
Not sure what you mean, so I guess not.
First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
81–90 of 191 posts
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#82Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#83It is for beauty like this that I believe all living things were originally designed by some intelligence, somewhere. Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or perhaps that was a limitation in the source materials, but there are some beautifully engineered living systems on our planet.
non sequitur. Why does beauty imply the existence of an intelligent designer?
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#84I wonder how its prevents wear? Could be something quite revolutionary there for the finding. Some sort of new organic lubricant, or something in the gears that self lubricates.
>Even stranger is that the issus doesn't keep these gears throughout its life cycle. As the adolescent insect grows, it molts half a dozen times, upgrading its exoskeleton (gears included) for larger and larger versions. But after its final molt into adulthood—poof, the gears are gone. The adult syncs its legs by friction like all the other planthoppers.
>Their idea: If one of the gear teeth were to slip and break in an adult, its jumping ability would be hindered forever. With no more molts, it would have no chance to grow more gears.
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to imagine a couple of touching pieces in the ancestor of the issid that aided in synchronizing the jumping mechanics. Over time, mutations in those touching pieces interlocked more firmly until they resembled what we think of as gears. If this were the case, would you not expect to observe these evolutionary steps in other organisms today? As noted in the article: ...there are many jumping insects like the…
> If there are "many jumping" insects, how does it come to be that only a single specie (that we know of, granted) that has evolved this feature, and why have we not observed others undergoing the evolutionary process that could/would yield them in others? Because evolution isn't planned, it involves selection from randomly[1]-occuring variations each of which has a extremely low probability. Certainly, we see some s…
Certainly, we see some some traits that arise independently in different populations in different places with similar traits and are preserved and develop in similar ways, but the fact that a feature that contributes to fitness arises uniquely in one place is far from surprising.
I grant you all but a feature that contributes to fitness arises uniquely in one place is far from surprising. First, I'm not a biologist and have not studied evolution/evolutionary processes as much as I would like to, but it's hard to agree with that statement. Why exactly is it not surprising? In the over one-million insect species estimated to exist[1], of which some percentage (won't even try to guess) have some evolutionary jumping mechanism, it seems at least mildly surprising that we've never observed at least similarly structured creatures.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect#Distribution_and_diversi...
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#86It is for beauty like this that I believe all living things were originally designed by some intelligence, somewhere. Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or perhaps that was a limitation in the source materials, but there are some beautifully engineered living systems on our planet.
non sequitur . Why does beauty imply the existence of an intelligent designer?
Engineering beauty.
Like a Saturn V rocket, or an AC induction motor.
Things that make you proud to be an engineer.
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#87[deleted]
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#88"They're rather specialized, and there are lots of other jumpers that don't have them, so there must be some kind of advantage."
Not necessarily. Evolution has a lot to do with path dependence and in no way guarantees the best of all possible adaptations.
Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#89Re: First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pulleys are not that rare. Block and tackle is, but you have pulleys in your hands.
Wikipedia defines pulleys as "A pulley is a wheel on an axle that is designed to support movement of a cable or belt along its circumference" , though I think the wheel/axle requirement is probably shouldn't be considered a hard requirement. On the other hand, I don't think I would call the loops that fishing line passes through along the length of a fishing pole "pulleys". I guess I'd say that block and tackle is no…
If your line is out, and you take up slack and the fishing pole starts to bow, the loops are indeed functioning as pulleys.