A plant-hopping insect has joints that work like interlocking gears, a
new study reports, the first known instance of coglike wheels in nature.
“We always think of gears in our cars or bikes,” said an author of the study, Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge. “We don’t see them to be present in animals.”
Dr. Burrows and his colleague Gregory Sutton, a researcher the University of Bristol, report their findings in the current issue of the journal Science.
They found the gear mechanism in the hind legs of the juvenile Issus
coleoptratus, a champion jumper found in gardens throughout Europe. Its
coglike joints were first described in the 1950s, but it was only with
advanced high-speed video that the scientists were able to prove how the
joints worked.
Before the insect leaps forward, it hooks its gear teeth on one leg to
the gear teeth on the other. That way, Dr. Burrows said, “the power is
delivered to both legs at the same time, so no leg is twisted.” The legs
are synchronized within 30 millionths of a second. The researchers
found that as the juvenile insects became adults, they lost their gear
mechanisms, though it was not clear why.
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