Plant Hopping Insect Uses Gear Mechanism to Jump
Posted on September 13, 2013
Evolution beat humans to the development of the gear mechanism. Researchers from the University of Cambridge discovered that the juvenile Issus, a common plant-hopping ivy-eating insect, uses an interlocking cog mechanism when it jumps. A scanning electron micrograph image of the intermeshing gears is pictured above. The Cambridge scientists used a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture to reveal the tiny gears. They found that the juvenile Issus has "hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing 'teeth' that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal's legs when it launches into a jump."
The Issus loses its hind-leg gears on reaching adulthood. It is not known exactly why this happens. The scientists say the explanation could be the larger size of adults and the fact that in a gear system when one tooth breaks it can make the whole gear mechanism fail.
Professor Malcolm Burrows, lead author of the study from Cambridge's Department of Zoology, says in a statement, "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."
Co-author Gregory Sutton, now at the University of Bristol, says, "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."
Take a look:
The research was published here in the journal, Science.