First gear found in living creature

[foxfirefey]

On the legs of jumping critter the size of an ant:



The gears help synchronize the movements of jumping in a precise manner. The weirdest part is it's only on the juveniles! The feature gets lost as an adult.

Comments

[birguslatro]

From the article...

"There are a lot of friction pads around, and they accomplish pretty much of the same thing," he says. "So I wonder what extra capacity these gears confer. They're rather specialized, and there are lots of other jumpers that don't have them, so there must be some kind of advantage."

I think he's got that back to front. It's more likely the gears provide little or no advantage, which is why nothing else is known to have them.

That said, there's only one species on the planet that has electric toothbrushes, so it's not the perfect argument. (Hopefully.)

[primsong]

This is actually really, really cool - baby buggy gears!