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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Joe is away at the moment, but we're

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Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and slot in a vault episode for today.

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Speaker 1: This is just helping us deal with some some some

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Speaker 1: late summer or at least late summer break um disruptions here,

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Speaker 1: but we're gonna go ahead and play Creature of the Gear.

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Speaker 1: This originally published on nine to one. UH. It's an

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Speaker 1: interesting look at gears and when did humans invent gears?

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Speaker 1: And also what do we find that are like gears

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Speaker 1: in nature? And we'll even look at a few wheel

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Speaker 1: based mythological creatures. Now, don't fret, we're gonna be back

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Speaker 1: on Thursday. We should be back on Thursday with a

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Speaker 1: fun interview episode and then we'll be back into the

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Speaker 1: regular schedule right after that. So, without further ado, let's

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Speaker 1: dive right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Today we're gonna be in a way we're

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Speaker 1: continuing on past discussions concerning the wheel Um, also past

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Speaker 1: discussions concerning UH like rolling creatures. But we're gonna be

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Speaker 1: getting more specifically into the realm of the gear in

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Speaker 1: this episode. Now, I have to say, I'm anytime we

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Speaker 1: get into one of these discussions, I'm always reminded of

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Speaker 1: a few lines from The Omega Man. Uh. In part

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Speaker 1: because it's in its own way, it's a weirdly interesting film. Also,

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Speaker 1: I probably listened to a bit too much Wide Zombie

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Speaker 1: back in high school. Uh, because there's some or maybe

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Speaker 1: it's a zombie song that that samples this movie. But

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Speaker 1: there's this one wonderful line from Anthony zerve Is character says,

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Speaker 1: the creature of the Wheel, the lord of the infernal engines. Um,

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Speaker 1: what is he talking about the vampires? Or is he

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Speaker 1: talking about about Charlton Heston. He's talking about old Chuck Heston. There,

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Speaker 1: he's the This man represents the wheel and the technology

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Speaker 1: of the wheel and all the terrible things that we're

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Speaker 1: done with it. Um, but wait, I recall the vampires

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Speaker 1: using wheeled vehicles. Do they not? Don't they have like

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Speaker 1: a sort of zombie mobile. Yeah, I'm not saying it

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Speaker 1: makes sense. I'm not saying it's a fair criticism. I'm

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Speaker 1: just saying that Anthony Zerva had a really cool voice,

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Speaker 1: and uh and when he said these lines, it was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that sounds cool. I don't know what it means exactly,

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Speaker 1: but it sounds pretty cool. You know, it would be

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Speaker 1: a really good movie Monster Bug Fight and and both

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Speaker 1: are Charlton Heston movies. If you pick the vampires from

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Speaker 1: the Omega Man versus the Adam Bomb Cult from the

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Speaker 1: second Planet of the Apes movie, you know, they're they're

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Speaker 1: pretty similar. I think, pretty similar morbid humanoids. But I

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Speaker 1: would like to see them duke it out and Charlton Heston,

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Speaker 1: I guess can just watch this time. Yeah, what was

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Speaker 1: that beneath the Planet of the Apes? I always like that.

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Speaker 1: As far as any eight movies that came after Planet

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Speaker 1: of the Apes, that one, that one always appealed to me.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. Uh. I remember there's a part

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Speaker 1: where they sing a hymn to the atom bomb. You remember, Yep,

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Speaker 1: they have just a big old atom bomb in there

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Speaker 1: that they worship. I think it's like a minor key

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Speaker 1: version of all things bright and beautiful. But it's interesting

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Speaker 1: all these things are connected because we're dealing with with

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Speaker 1: a human technology and the idea of worshiping the technology,

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Speaker 1: being bound to the technology and and the wheel, and

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Speaker 1: by virtue of the wheel, gears and machines being this

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Speaker 1: thing that is particular to human beings, something that that

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Speaker 1: that we have created. It's a part of our various civilizations.

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Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting to think about humans as

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Speaker 1: creatures of the wheel empire, because of course there have

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Speaker 1: been plenty of cultures and civilizations where the wheel, at

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Speaker 1: least in terms of of vehicles, has played no practical role.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps it you know, that you had the wheel as

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Speaker 1: a toy, perhaps it was used as a spiritual aid

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Speaker 1: or device that could serve as a metaphor. But then certainly,

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Speaker 1: by the time we get to the you know, the

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Speaker 1: age of roads and engines, humanity very visibly becomes a

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Speaker 1: people of the wheel. But then, as we'll discussed in

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Speaker 1: this episode a little bit, you also get into this

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Speaker 1: domain of wheels and gears, of of wheels doing things

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Speaker 1: that they don't have have anything directly to do with vehicles,

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Speaker 1: but it's all about using the energy of the wheel

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Speaker 1: to do other things. And yet at the same time,

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Speaker 1: and this also makes me think of the field of biomemetics,

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Speaker 1: bioble metics, of course, as when we we say, okay,

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Speaker 1: I have an engineering problem. I need to turn to

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Speaker 1: the realm of nature for a possible solution, because I've

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Speaker 1: only been working on this engineering problem for you know,

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Speaker 1: X amount of time. But evolution has been working around

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Speaker 1: similar engineering problems just for for millions of years. So

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Speaker 1: perhaps we can we can cheat off of nature in

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Speaker 1: that regard. But of course, one of the problems is

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Speaker 1: that the wheel almost never comes up in nature itself.

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Speaker 1: Gears almost never come up in nature, So biomometically, you're

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Speaker 1: not going to turn to nature and say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: well there's a there's a solution involving the wheel that

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Speaker 1: I might use. Oh let's look and see how this

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Speaker 1: particular creature uses rotary blades to fly that sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I actually really enjoy thinking about this in

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Speaker 1: terms of comparing animal bodies to different types of machines,

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Speaker 1: machine components, simple machines, you know, the stuff you learn

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Speaker 1: about in those first physics lessons when you're a kid.

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Speaker 1: So you know, you know the lever and the inclined

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Speaker 1: plane and the and the pulley and the screw and

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Speaker 1: all that. And I feel like when you do this exercise.

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Speaker 1: There is one type of simple machine that absolutely dominates

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Speaker 1: the landscape of biology, and that is the lever. Biology

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Speaker 1: is full of levers. I think you could make an

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Speaker 1: argument that almost all of the skeletal muscle in our

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Speaker 1: bodies is designed by evolution for the operation of levers.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there are some exceptions that aren't occurring to me,

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Speaker 1: but I would say, if not all of them, almost

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Speaker 1: all of them. So, for example, when you use your

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Speaker 1: bicep to do an arm curl, you're curling a dumbbell.

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Speaker 1: You know, the muscle primarily the bicep. I think also

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Speaker 1: somewhat the muscle in your forearm is exerting the effort.

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Speaker 1: The load is what's in your hand, it's your your fist,

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Speaker 1: and the full crum is the elbow joint, and of

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Speaker 1: course the bone is the lever. So I think most

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Speaker 1: of the body's gross motor activity is based on the

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Speaker 1: action of levers with joints as the fulcrum. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: then but then when you start looking for other simple

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Speaker 1: machines and animal bodies, you can turn up some examples,

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Speaker 1: but it suddenly gets a lot more difficult to scope

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Speaker 1: things out. Like you can maybe make the argument that

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Speaker 1: sharp teeth and fangs, or a type of wedge which

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Speaker 1: is technically a form of the simple machine known as

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Speaker 1: the inclined plane. But then there are other types of

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Speaker 1: of machines and machine parts that are pretty rare or

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Speaker 1: even non existent in nature, and the wheel is a

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Speaker 1: good one of these. There there are really only a

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Speaker 1: few examples that people can point to of things that

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Speaker 1: might be considered freely rotating wheels and axles. In biology,

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Speaker 1: sometimes people bring up versions of the bacterial flagella as

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Speaker 1: something that sort of operates like a wheel, kind of

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Speaker 1: spinning like a propeller to move the bacterium uh through

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Speaker 1: through a liquid medium and uh. And then there are

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Speaker 1: also I think some possible parts of animal digestive systems

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Speaker 1: that may function kind of like a wheel. But animal

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Speaker 1: body plans clearly favored the versatility of legs based on

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Speaker 1: levers instead of wheels. And you can make a few

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Speaker 1: different arguments about why evolution overwhelmingly goes that route. You

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Speaker 1: could you could say maybe it has something to do

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Speaker 1: with just morphological precedence, like that levers are easier to

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Speaker 1: evolve from the pre existing forms that were available for

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Speaker 1: animal bodies to work on when in you know, adapting

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Speaker 1: through small mutations. But you could also argue that there

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Speaker 1: are natural uh, terrain negotiation advantages to levers. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you're not in a world of clean paved surfaces,

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Speaker 1: wheels can actually pretty easily get hung up on things,

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Speaker 1: and you need the articulation of levers and limbs in

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Speaker 1: order to say, uh, you know, get over rugged terrain,

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Speaker 1: or to flip yourself back over if you fall on

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Speaker 1: your back. I think it's also telling that when we

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Speaker 1: look to the world of mythological creatures and beings, we

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Speaker 1: don't see a lot of wheels, or at least we

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Speaker 1: don't see a lot of wheels that are innately organic.

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Speaker 1: And then if we do, we tend not to see

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Speaker 1: a creature or a being that is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: of this world. Um and uh. And perhaps there's some

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Speaker 1: exception to this rule that I'm overlooking, but I thought

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Speaker 1: I might bring up a couple of examples. One and

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Speaker 1: I know I've mentioned this this critter on the show before.

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Speaker 1: There is a demon by the name of Bure. I

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Speaker 1: believe it is b U e R described in Johann

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Speaker 1: of Viers fifteen sixty three. Grimore Pseudo Monarchia demonium Um.

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Speaker 1: This covers a number of different of supposed demons, and

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Speaker 1: this demon Buer is the great President of Hell, kind

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Speaker 1: of a goblin faced lion with kind of a wheel

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Speaker 1: of five legs going around it, which I find reminiscent

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Speaker 1: of the pet rail wheel which I mentioned in a

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Speaker 1: previous Artifact episode, an experimental tank wheel that had legs

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Speaker 1: on it. Um. So as the wheel turns, the legs

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Speaker 1: are are placed down onto the ground. Uh this case,

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Speaker 1: they are goat legs, and I've I've read that they're

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Speaker 1: supposed to symbolize the demon's ability to move in any direction.

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Speaker 1: So I'm not entirely sure that we're even supposed to

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Speaker 1: imagine this creature turning like a wheel or like a

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Speaker 1: clock or something. But when I look at him, that's

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Speaker 1: all I can see. Like he basically moves on the

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Speaker 1: page or on the screen when I stare at him,

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Speaker 1: and I can imagine I'm kind of lumping around along.

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Speaker 1: You know. Well, I tend to think about um when

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Speaker 1: wheels are imagined in the imagery of mythology and religion,

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Speaker 1: it's often to say something about the fact that the

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Speaker 1: vision is boggling the mind. It You know that it's

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Speaker 1: transcending familiar forms and just completely awing you and humbling

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Speaker 1: you with confusion. Uh. So I think, for example, about

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Speaker 1: Ezekiel's vision of the wheels in in in the Hebrew Bible,

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Speaker 1: and and how the wheels there. Uh, it seems to

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Speaker 1: me at least, I mean, I'm you know, no professional

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Speaker 1: legs ag eat on that, but it seems like that

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Speaker 1: they symbolize something about a concept that sort of like

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Speaker 1: surpasses human understanding. You're looking at something that your mind

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Speaker 1: can't even fit around. Yeah, I mean, we can easily

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Speaker 1: imagine the various connotations that are being drawn in there

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Speaker 1: when you have a wheel like appearing in the sky,

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Speaker 1: because you have the idea of technology, something created by

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Speaker 1: rational beings. You have the idea of sort of cosmic

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Speaker 1: wheels and circular forms related to the movements of the

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Speaker 1: stars and the planets and so forth. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: the idea too that if if this is mixed with

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Speaker 1: some sort of biological or faintly biological or hybrid form,

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Speaker 1: that that is again something that is not reflected in nature.

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Speaker 1: It is something there is something inherently unnatural about this,

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Speaker 1: this hybrid being that is not even just part animal

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Speaker 1: and part human or part of this animal and part

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Speaker 1: that animal, but part flesh being and part cosmic or

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Speaker 1: technological entity. Now then again, in nature and biology, you

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Speaker 1: do find all kinds of round mechanism and round bodies

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Speaker 1: and even rolling forms. You know, lots of animals can

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Speaker 1: roll up into a round shape and then roll their

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Speaker 1: whole body. What you what really seems to be unusual

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Speaker 1: in nature, And again maybe you can only find a

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Speaker 1: few examples here and there that would seem to fit.

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Speaker 1: This is a freely rotating wheel that somehow transfers energy

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Speaker 1: within a broader context. So like the wheel and axle

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Speaker 1: on a car that moves the car body the car,

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Speaker 1: you know, the chassiss stationary and then the wheel turns

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Speaker 1: to propel it forward. That's what you really don't find

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Speaker 1: much of in nature. But if you're content with just

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Speaker 1: like something round that rolls, you can have a wheel

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Speaker 1: spider rolling down a dune. You can have bugs that

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Speaker 1: roll up into round shapes and roll all over the place.

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Speaker 1: Even some mammals do that. Yeah, there are some examples

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Speaker 1: of creatures that that form rolling shapes, granted if the

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Speaker 1: topography is correct. Uh. There's also, of course, the example

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Speaker 1: of goat poop I've seen brought up. Granted, goat poop

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Speaker 1: is not itself alive, but it is the product of

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Speaker 1: of a biological organism. And the idea here is that

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Speaker 1: the goat poop is nice and rounds so that it

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Speaker 1: can roll away and hide itself. Uh in these kind

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Speaker 1: of environments. But I advocate for goat poop personhood, okay, um.

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Speaker 1: But but of course, one of the things about any

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Speaker 1: of these rolling creatures is, of course, if it's gonna roll,

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Speaker 1: it's everything's gonna roll. There's not gonna be a stationary

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Speaker 1: part all of the rolling creature as in the same

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Speaker 1: way that say, there would be the cart portion of

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Speaker 1: an ox cart would remain the same. Uh. But when

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Speaker 1: we look to some of our supernatural models, we do

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Speaker 1: see things that work like this, of course in a

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Speaker 1: very supernatural form. Uh. There's a wonderful wheel creature in um.

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Speaker 1: In Japanese traditions, there's a yokai known as one you know,

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Speaker 1: the fire wheel, and he's a he's a pretty famous yokai.

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Speaker 1: You've you've probably seen images of him, especially if you

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Speaker 1: partake of various like anime um products, because he pops

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Speaker 1: up in a lot of things. I think he pops

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Speaker 1: up in some video games as well. He looks like

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Speaker 1: a grumpy, giant human head sort of haloed by a burning,

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Speaker 1: smoking ghost wheel, and we get the impression that the

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Speaker 1: wheel is moving in the head is remaining stationary. He

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Speaker 1: said to guard the gates of Hell, and I've also

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Speaker 1: read that in life he said to have been a

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Speaker 1: cruel ruler who burned people on the wheel, so this

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Speaker 1: is kind of his punishment. He haunts them the roads

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Speaker 1: at night. He made drag souls back to Hell. And

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Speaker 1: there's also a female variation called Catawaga. Okay, so this

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Speaker 1: would seem to be more like that mechanism you don't

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Speaker 1: really find in nature, if the head stays stationary while

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Speaker 1: the wheel turns around it right. And of course in

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Speaker 1: this too we have just a it's not even pretending

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Speaker 1: to be an entirely organic creature. It is this supernatural

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Speaker 1: um combination of two or three different things. Um. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a pretty popular figure. The Power Rangers have

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Speaker 1: even fought him on occasion. Um shows up in very

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Speaker 1: his anime titles, and I have to say sometimes he

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Speaker 1: looks a little bit like Dr robot Nick from The

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Speaker 1: Sonic games. So I wonder if Dr Robotnick was at

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Speaker 1: all inspired by this Yokai you know, a grumpy faced

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Speaker 1: man machine with kind of a spherical design. Because Dr

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Speaker 1: Robotnick is he's the Eggman, you know, so he's often

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Speaker 1: in some kind of little like little circular pod. Why

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Speaker 1: do I want to say that the the Dr Robotnick

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Speaker 1: was supposed to be based on the appearance of Theodore Roosevelt.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? He does look

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Speaker 1: like Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah, so that might be it instead.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I couldn't. I briefly looked around. I

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Speaker 1: couldn't find anything that connected at Dr Robotnick. There's not

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Speaker 1: a lot of scholarship on Dr Robotnick, it seems unless

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Speaker 1: I'm missing it. And if I am missing it, please

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Speaker 1: send it to me. I want to read your your thesis, Okay.

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Speaker 1: Our new podcast is an oral history of Dr Robotnick. Um,

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Speaker 1: now there's a there's another throw some I am the Walrus,

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Speaker 1: and some Teddy Roosevelt and little Blender and then there

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Speaker 1: you go, oh, yeah, there's definitely a It seems like

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Speaker 1: there's definitely a Beatles connection there as well. Now, um,

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Speaker 1: I was I was reading about this, particularly Yokai, and

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Speaker 1: there's one more little story I ran across it. I

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Speaker 1: have to share. This was I found this on Matthew Myers.

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Speaker 1: Yokai dot com has a profile of when Udo and

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Speaker 1: shares a brief story that I haven't found anywhere else.

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Speaker 1: But it's it's too good not to share, and I'm

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Speaker 1: probably just missing accounts of it elsewhere. But quoting this website,

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Speaker 1: one famous story from Kyoto tells a woman who peeked

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Speaker 1: out her window at one Udo as he passed through town.

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Speaker 1: The demon snarled at her, saying, instead of looking at me,

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Speaker 1: have a look at your own child. She looked back

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Speaker 1: at her baby, who was screaming on the floor in

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Speaker 1: a pool of blood. Both of its legs had been

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Speaker 1: completely torn from its body. When she looked back out

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Speaker 1: at one Udo, that child's legs were in its mouth,

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Speaker 1: being eaten by the mad, grinning monster. What so it

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Speaker 1: did he teleport that? I don't Okay, yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. He's eating those baby legs. He's a bad dude.

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Speaker 1: That that's a bad dude. So anyway, I'll stop there

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Speaker 1: with my wheel creatures. But this suffice to say, just

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Speaker 1: just bringing these up to drive home the fact that

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Speaker 1: that I think we we have long not expected to

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Speaker 1: find wheels and gears in the natural world. They are

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Speaker 1: things of our creation. We are the people of the wheel,

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Speaker 1: well especially the gear. So that that was my original

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Speaker 1: idea for the episode, was to focus on the idea

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Speaker 1: of artificial gears versus possible examples of gears in nature.

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Speaker 1: And while you can make arguments for a few examples

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Speaker 1: of wheels in nature, the gear is really a different

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Speaker 1: kind of story, except for this one really cool example

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Speaker 1: that we're gonna be looking at today. So what is

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Speaker 1: a gear? Well, you've seen gears before, but to actually

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Speaker 1: define the concept what counts as a gear, I think

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Speaker 1: I think you could say a gear is a set

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Speaker 1: of rotating machine parts with interlocking teeth. So these can

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Speaker 1: often take the form of a kind of flat circular plate,

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Speaker 1: but they can also take the form of, say like

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Speaker 1: a long shaft that has teeth on the shaft, or

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Speaker 1: they can even be non circular. There are more kind

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Speaker 1: of square shaped gears and gears of all different kinds

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Speaker 1: of shapes and sizes, but what's common to all of

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Speaker 1: them is that they have teeth that interlock with each other,

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Speaker 1: and they use those teeth and rotation to transfer force

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Speaker 1: rotational force known as torque, So they can transfer torque

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Speaker 1: from one place to another, and they can also sometimes

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Speaker 1: transform that force in some way as it is transferred.

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Speaker 1: So gears can change the direction of rotational force. Like

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Speaker 1: if you picture two interlocking wheel shaped gears, you rotate

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Speaker 1: one of them clockwise, will actually rotate the other one counterclockwise,

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Speaker 1: so that'll that'll perform one kind of change. Or you

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Speaker 1: can change the orientation of the torque by having the

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Speaker 1: gears interlock at an angle. So think of for example, well,

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Speaker 1: how if you imagine a car that has the engine

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Speaker 1: sending its rotational force its torque through a drive shaft

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Speaker 1: that runs along the length of the car, then that

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Speaker 1: energy has to be transferred to the wheels to get

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Speaker 1: them rotating in the direction that's parallel to the car's motion.

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Speaker 1: So there are gears that interlock at angles there to

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Speaker 1: transfer that force eventually to the wheels. But gears can

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Speaker 1: also be used to gain mechanical advantage or change the

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Speaker 1: speed of a rotational force in a mathematically predictable way. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, if you use a bigger gear with more

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Speaker 1: teeth to spin a smaller gear with fewer teeth. The

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Speaker 1: smaller gear will spin faster than the larger one, and

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Speaker 1: the change in speed will be proportional to the ratio

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Speaker 1: of the tooth counts between the two differently sized gears.

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Speaker 1: In other words, if you use a gear to drive

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Speaker 1: a second gear with half as many teeth as the

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Speaker 1: first gear, it will spin exactly twice as fast. To

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Speaker 1: a certain extent, it almost feels like like wheel wizardry,

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Speaker 1: because the wheel is doing its thing and and and

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Speaker 1: if you're not going to do anything else, you can Okay,

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Speaker 1: you can do various tasks and carry out various acts

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Speaker 1: by interacting with that wheel on its terms. But by

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Speaker 1: the use of gears, you can transform it. You can

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Speaker 1: you can make the gear work in other ways. Um,

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Speaker 1: and I think that's that's one of the fascinating things.

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Speaker 1: So when we're when we're talking about sort of that

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Speaker 1: lead from from wheel to gear, and of course, and

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Speaker 1: this could be just as simple as well. I don't

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Speaker 1: want horizontal rotation, I want vertical rotation, that sort of thing, right,

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Speaker 1: But it can also this last thing I mentioned about

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Speaker 1: the predictable mathematical relationships between the intervals of rotation of

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Speaker 1: tooth to gears. The fact that toothed gears are quantized

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Speaker 1: right that you can like put a number to the

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Speaker 1: number of teeth on a rotation that allows you to

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Speaker 1: tightly control the ratios you know, how fast one spins

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Speaker 1: in relationship to another one. That actually has made gears

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Speaker 1: useful not just for say, applying force to things like

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Speaker 1: you know, powering a machine or something, but also for

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Speaker 1: tasks related to more abstract types of work, like measurements

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Speaker 1: such as measuring intervals of time UM, and not just

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Speaker 1: in straightforward timekeeping devices like clocks. Of course, gears are

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00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:24,600
Speaker 1: very important in in UM analog clocks, but even more

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Speaker 1: complex applications like we see in one of the most

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Speaker 1: intriguing artifacts from the ancient world, known as the Antiquothera mechanism,

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Speaker 1: which is widely considered the first known computer not a

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00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:42,639
Speaker 1: digital computer, but an analog computer, a computer that uses

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00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: gears instead of semiconductors for information processing. UH. The Antikothera

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Speaker 1: mechanism was discovered in a Roman era shipwreck in the

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Speaker 1: Mediterranean around the r nineteen hundred UH, and this shipwreck

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Speaker 1: traced back to a ship that sank probably in the

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Speaker 1: first since chere ce rob. I've got an image for

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00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:05,200
Speaker 1: you to look at here that shows the actual remains

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00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:09,320
Speaker 1: of the mechanism alongside a modern reconstruction that was sort

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00:22:09,359 --> 00:22:12,639
Speaker 1: of reverse engineered and built by some experts who had

388
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,199
Speaker 1: studied this machine. The mechanism is now understood to have

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00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:20,600
Speaker 1: been an ancient mechanical or ory. An oorory is a

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00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 1: is a working model of the movement of heavenly bodies,

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00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:27,680
Speaker 1: and this one would have been powered by a hand

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00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 1: crank that operated gears. And this or ory would allow

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00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:36,399
Speaker 1: you to calculate the relative positions of heavenly bodies like

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00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:39,280
Speaker 1: the Moon and the Sun as they traveled through the

395
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:43,280
Speaker 1: zodiac out to specific future dates. Uh. And I think

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00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: it may it may also have tracked planetary motion as well,

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00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:49,399
Speaker 1: but that's less certain. I think that's a hypothetical mechanism

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00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:51,760
Speaker 1: that may have been present but may have been lost.

399
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: When I look at it, I'm instantly reminded of those uh,

400
00:22:55,600 --> 00:22:59,639
Speaker 1: those gear devices you find at museums and zoos where

401
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: you and squash a penny and make it into a

402
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:05,480
Speaker 1: collector's token, which which I have to say, as as

403
00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:08,600
Speaker 1: a parent, I have I have long realized the children

404
00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:11,639
Speaker 1: are drawn to these like like flies. Uh. To to

405
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: meet they they have to turn the crank. They have

406
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:21,240
Speaker 1: to watch those gears operate. Um and uh and And

407
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:23,360
Speaker 1: now that we've actually discussed gears a bit on the show,

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Speaker 1: I used to be I was. I've long been very

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Speaker 1: annoyed by it, like, oh, come on, don't mess with that.

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00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 1: We're here to look at something else, and you're just

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Speaker 1: gonna turn this gear on this machine that I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to give you fifty cents and a penny for

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00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,440
Speaker 1: because it's it's a dumb invention. But at the same

414
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:38,640
Speaker 1: time they're interacting with the gears, they're getting to see

415
00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 1: the gears in motion and see some of that energy

416
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:43,200
Speaker 1: transference that we're talking about. Oh well, I mean yeah,

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00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,840
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful way. Actually, I think to educate kids

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Speaker 1: about mechanical advantage, about like what machines can do. Because

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00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:53,400
Speaker 1: the kid, they know that they wouldn't have enough strength

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00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: to smash a penny flat with their hands alone, but

421
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:01,159
Speaker 1: with their hands by operating a rank in a machine

422
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 1: that has no external power source. It's just the power

423
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: of their arm. But through the mechanical advantage created by

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00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 1: this crank, the lever of the gears. They can smash

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00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 1: a penny. That that's kind of that's that's empowering knowledge

426
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:15,879
Speaker 1: that there's a wizardry to that too. Behold the power

427
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 1: of the gear. But anyway back to the antikotherum mechanism.

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00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:24,320
Speaker 1: So it was able to predict the future movements of

429
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:26,760
Speaker 1: heavenly bodies like the Sun and the moon, and also

430
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: I think predict eclipses. And it managed the different time

431
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: ratios between these these moving objects in the heavens by

432
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 1: the use of gear ratios, gear ratios to calculate the

433
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: intervals of these movements. So in a way, this was

434
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: a calculator the different ratios between the number of teeth

435
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: on the gears. We're doing math for you now. We

436
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 1: know in the modern world gears are useful in all

437
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,160
Speaker 1: kinds of machines. You find them everywhere. They're in clocks,

438
00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: they're in cars, they're in fluid pumps, they're in mills

439
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: and factory machines. Uh. But but you might wonder, okay, well,

440
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: where did they first appear in the technological space, Because

441
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily expect to have found a computer for

442
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 1: astronomical phenomena in the first century ce but here it

443
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: is and probably actually it's even older than that. I

444
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: think it's believed to have been uh. I don't know,

445
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:21,399
Speaker 1: maybe at least a hundred years old at the time

446
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: it was lost in the shipwreck, so so clearly that

447
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: that's taking gear math way way back. UH. And I

448
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:31,680
Speaker 1: was trying to find some good sources on the ancient

449
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: history of gears. I didn't come across anything that was

450
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: super recent, so there may be discoveries since these sources

451
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,919
Speaker 1: I turned up, but um one that was interesting to

452
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: me because it was by Derek John Desola Price, who

453
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 1: was a British physicist and historian of science who was

454
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,639
Speaker 1: one of the investigators who worked on the Antiko theorem mechanism. UH.

455
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 1: He did a chapter that was in a book put

456
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,719
Speaker 1: out by the U. S National Museum Bulletin in nineteen

457
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 1: fifty nine called on the origin of clockwork perpetual motion

458
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: devices in the Compass, and in a short section on

459
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:10,240
Speaker 1: the earliest known examples of gears and geared mechanisms, he

460
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 1: writes that the earliest evidence for the knowledge of tooth

461
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: to gears um. Probably it goes back at least as

462
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: far as the Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes, who showed

463
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 1: clear knowledge of of toothed gears, and he lived in

464
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: the third century BC. But he also cites artifacts from

465
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: ancient China that may indicate knowledge of of gears even

466
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: farther back than that. He writes, quote, in China, actual

467
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: examples of wheels and molds for wheels dating back from

468
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:42,639
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC have been preserved. One of the

469
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: interesting things he mentioned about some of these earliest examples

470
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 1: of gears in the archaeological record. Uh. He says, quote,

471
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: a remarkable feature in these early gears is the use

472
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: of ratchet shaped teeth, sometimes even twisted heliically so that

473
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:02,160
Speaker 1: the gears resemble worms into or meshing on parallel axles.

474
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: But then he also calls attention to the fact that

475
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,919
Speaker 1: throughout much of history, uh, you know, definitely before the

476
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,479
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, a big use of a lot of a

477
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:17,600
Speaker 1: major use for gears in the technological space was in mills,

478
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: in windmills and water mills, using large gears as a

479
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: way of transferring force, often at a right angle to

480
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: how these natural forces like the flow of water or

481
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: the flow of wind. We're we're moving the primary turban yeah,

482
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: or likewise to transition from say a horizontal paddle wheel

483
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: into a vertical millstone, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah,

484
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: Now another paper that you you turned up on. This

485
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: comes to us from M. J. T. Lewis Gearing in

486
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: the Ancient World, published in Endeavor seventy seventeen, number three

487
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: from UM and I was reading through this one. This

488
00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. I'm going to be some slight retreading

489
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: of what we're vary discussed, but basically, according to this

490
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: paper we can trace the technology of of the gear

491
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 1: to ancient Greeks of the third century b c. Which

492
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 1: also according to um uh To Fagan at all in

493
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: uh the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World. Uh.

494
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: You know this is this is also the time and

495
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: place where we see, at least according to ancient Greek

496
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 1: and Latin technical authors, the birth of water powered milling uh,

497
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 1: a technology that of course would be highly effective. But

498
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:32,439
Speaker 1: according to to uh To Lewis, here in Alexandria, the

499
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:35,399
Speaker 1: Greek kings of Egypt at the time the Ptolemy's, they

500
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 1: set up a research center called the Museum. I think

501
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: we've talked about the Museum in the past, right, perhaps

502
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: even in our episode the invention of the museum about

503
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: the sort of the original usage of this word that

504
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, Yeah, yeah, So basically, various technological innovations were

505
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: said to have emerged from this this sort of lab

506
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: this kind of technological think tank and laboratory. Uh and,

507
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: according to such writers as hero Vitruvius and Phillow of Byzantium,

508
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 1: they all point to the work of Descibius, who would

509
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 1: have lived to five through two twenty two b c E.

510
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: None of his actual writings survived, but he's said to

511
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: have written various works on compressed air and hydraulics, and

512
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: hero Vitrucius and Philo would all go on to write

513
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: at length on these various machines and uh and and devices,

514
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: various gear arrangements. Other great minds of that age and region,

515
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: such as Archimedes, would also expand on these ideas as well. Now,

516
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: Lewis explains that we ultimately don't know where and when

517
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: the earliest gears pop up in human history UH tooth gears,

518
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: he writes, already existed in the form of ratchet wheels

519
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: that were used to hold a windlass against a load,

520
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: and these might date back to Greek crane innovations from

521
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: around five b c. E um. He He also points

522
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,239
Speaker 1: that a bronze example of this has been found from

523
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: about a century later, and this might have been used

524
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: for hauling ships up a slipway. After this point, ratchets

525
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 1: were widely used on catapults as a way of holding

526
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: back all that potential firing energy. Um. But he writes, quote,

527
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: but the first toothed wheel for transmitting motion may have

528
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: been a sprocket wheel driving a chain. This is attested

529
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: by two machines described by Philo. One is a chain

530
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: of buckets powered by a water wheel. The other is

531
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: a repeater catapult built in roads by certain Dionysius of Alexandria,

532
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: who cannot be precisely identified, but may have well worked

533
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 1: before two eighty two b c. E. So the Greeks

534
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: and the Romans obviously applied the subsequent technology to a

535
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: number of tasks. But but Lewis raises the question did

536
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: they invent all of this themselves or did they borrow

537
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: or pick up on the ideas of others, And he

538
00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: writes that one possibility would be the they somehow got

539
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: these ideas from China. In fact, he writes this would

540
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: be seemingly the only other alternative. UM. However, one of

541
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: the limiting factors here is that accounts of the gear

542
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: in China largely come later, from the first century CE,

543
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: but he writes, quote the only earlier examples in China

544
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: so far recorded, and I do want to stress this

545
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: was like UM are a number of very small bronze

546
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: gears and ratchets found in tombs and dating from around

547
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: two b c E to fifty C. They include extraordinarily

548
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: what looked like chevron or double helical gear wheels of

549
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: tiny size. All seemed too small and too early to

550
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 1: belong as has been suggested to windlasses for drawing crossbows,

551
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 1: and we have no idea what they were for gear mystery.

552
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: And I include of uh images of these uh, these

553
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: mysterious gears below. So yeah, I haven't haven't had a

554
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: lot of time to investigate further to see if any

555
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: additional scholarship has emerged on these little gears and what

556
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: they might have been used for UM. And I don't

557
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: know if if ultimately there are stronger arguments that have

558
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 1: been put put forth regarding their use or possible use

559
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: and crossbow technology. But it's fascinating Oh, one of these

560
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: pictures you attached. I wonder if this is what Derek J.

561
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: To sell a Price was referring to when talking about

562
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 1: ratchet shaped teeth that are twisted helickally so that they

563
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: look like worms intermeshing on parallel axles. That I can

564
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: see at least one of the images you include from

565
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,600
Speaker 1: the Chinese example could could be what he's talking about there. Yeah,

566
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: that's where my mind went when you read that that debt.

567
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: Having having looked at these examples, Yeah, it has kind

568
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: of a worm like quality to it. Um. Now, Ultimately,

569
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: Lewis and his writing, he contends that gearing was either

570
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 1: invented independently in China and in the Greek world, or

571
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 1: that it was actually transmitted from the West to the

572
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:03,480
Speaker 1: East rather than vice versa. But but, but, like I said, that,

573
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,720
Speaker 1: there may be additional scholarship that we just haven't come

574
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 1: across yet regarding this. But it does raise the question

575
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 1: what kind of gears would one be entombed with? You know, what,

576
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: what bit of technology would it make sense to to

577
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: to go to the grave with. I mean, certainly a

578
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: very nice crossbow seems like the sort of thing you

579
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 1: might bring with you. Um, I don't know if it

580
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:26,960
Speaker 1: would make sense for there to be some sort of

581
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: like purely novelty gear device, like something that was more

582
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:35,240
Speaker 1: of a curio that maybe wasn't fully utilized or you know,

583
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 1: analog computer. Yeah, it could be. I guess if your

584
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:41,840
Speaker 1: journey in the afterlife really depends on knowing when an

585
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: eclipse is coming, yeah, I wonder yeah, yeah, and then

586
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: of course, but then of course, just interlocking gears and

587
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:51,720
Speaker 1: turning things are just are interesting. They they they make

588
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: us think about about motion and uh, interlocking energy. So

589
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems like they're there's just a

590
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: few different directs it could go in that I could

591
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: I could imagine somebody saying, uh, that is something I

592
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:13,879
Speaker 1: want to be buried than now. I want to come

593
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:19,880
Speaker 1: back to the concept of gears in biology because for

594
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: a long time, while there was probably no known example

595
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 1: of a working gear in the in the biological world,

596
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: there have been observations before of animals having appendages certainly

597
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: look like tooth to gears. And my favorite, uh instance

598
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: I came across here is a creature called the wheel

599
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:44,919
Speaker 1: bug or eralists cristatas. This is a type of predatory

600
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: assassin bug that preys on all kinds of insects, including aphids, caterpillars, beetles,

601
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: and bees. I found some very gnarly looking images of

602
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: of caterpillar mutilation. Yeah, I don't think i'd really seen

603
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:04,280
Speaker 1: this species before, these creatures before, but yeah, they're quite

604
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: cool looking. It kind of looks like it has some

605
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:09,840
Speaker 1: sort of a gear emerging from its back. Also, it

606
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 1: reminds me of a buzz saw or perhaps to some

607
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: degree of something like a stegasaurus or or or demetrodon

608
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:20,799
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, so it's called the wheel bug, but

609
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: I think maybe a better name would be the gear bug,

610
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: because it really does look like it's it's got this

611
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: toothed gear poking up out of the back of its carapace,

612
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: right sort of behind where the head is up on

613
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: the thorax. And so I was reading about this insect

614
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: on the University of Florida Department of Intropology's website. They've

615
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: got a good profile on it there and they say

616
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: in adulthood, this insect tends to measure about one to

617
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: one and a quarter inches long, and then quote, this

618
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: assassin bug is a dark, robust creature with long legs

619
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 1: and antennae, a stout beak, large eyes on a slim head,

620
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 1: and a prominent thoracic semicircular crep ust that resembles a

621
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: cog wheel or a chicken's comb. This is the only

622
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: insects species in the United States with such a crest.

623
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 1: The number of teeth or tubercles in the crest varies

624
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: from eight to twelve. Now immediately you're you're probably wondering,

625
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: as I was, what does it do? What? What is

626
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: the gear on its back? Do? I could not find

627
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: any solid research alluding to a purpose of this cog

628
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: wheel crest. That there may be something out there that

629
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:30,800
Speaker 1: I couldn't come across, or it may just be unknown.

630
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely unknown at this point what

631
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: this gear crest is for, in which case, barring other knowledge,

632
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 1: I guess you might assume that its purpose might have

633
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:44,240
Speaker 1: something to do with appearance rather than any mechanical function.

634
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it plays a visual role in interactions with predators

635
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: or prey or mats, or maybe it's defensive somehow. It's

636
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: hard to tell um but apparently Another interesting fact is

637
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: that the wheel is absent in juvenile So if you

638
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: look at nymphs of this assassin bug, they don't have it.

639
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: It only appears in adults after the insects final molting,

640
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: so once it reaches its ultimate form, then it's got

641
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: the gear. But whatever it's for, it does not appear

642
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: to be a functional gear. It just looks like one.

643
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,279
Speaker 1: I mean, for one thing, it can't rotate, and there's

644
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 1: nothing really that it could clearly be rotating against locking

645
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 1: its teeth with. It's just a crest that kind of

646
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: looks like a gear or like a like a chicken's comb. Now,

647
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: as amazing as these insects look, one thing I should

648
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: probably note is that you don't want to try to

649
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: handle it, because apparently wheelbugs can produce an extremely painful

650
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: bite that that lingers for days. But but anyway, this

651
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: animal is worth looking up. There are actually a few

652
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 1: other interesting things about them. For one thing, they do

653
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: appear to practice some amount of sexual cannibalism. Also, they

654
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: there is another mystery about them where they produce a vocalization.

655
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 1: I think they create a chirping sound by a certain

656
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,359
Speaker 1: type of a friction mechanism where they rub one part

657
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 1: of their body on another. I think maybe they're rubbing

658
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 1: some uh, they're either their beak or four legs. I

659
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 1: think it was the beak on an on a part

660
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: on the underside of their carapacet and it creates this chirping.

661
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: And scientists, as far as I could tell, don't know

662
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: what this is for yet. But coming back to the

663
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: idea of an actual mechanically functional gear in biology, as

664
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: of a study published in the year in the journal Science,

665
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:31,919
Speaker 1: there actually is at least one known animal that does

666
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: contain working toothed gears within its body, and as far

667
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:37,800
Speaker 1: as I could tell, this is also still the only

668
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: animal that has this feature that that's known, and this

669
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 1: animal is a type of plant hopper insect known as S. S.

670
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 1: Colliup tratis. The paper that reported the discovery of this

671
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: animal gear was, like I said, published in Science in

672
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: by authors Malcolm Burrows and Gregory Sutton, who both at

673
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: the time worked in the biological sciences at Cambridge University,

674
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:06,480
Speaker 1: and it was called interacting gears synchronized propulsive leg movements

675
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: in a jumping insect. Now, Rob, I've got some images

676
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 1: that you can that you can look at here while

677
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: I'm talking about this. There's some really interesting electron micrographs

678
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 1: of of these these gear pieces. They truly don't really

679
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: look animal, right, you know, they do look like a machine.

680
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: And I always love that when you like zoom way

681
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: in on the parts of an insect or something and

682
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,080
Speaker 1: you get that hr Geeger space where you can't tell

683
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:34,439
Speaker 1: if what you're looking at is is natural or artificial. Yeah,

684
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: because there's one image here of believe a nymph um

685
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 1: of of this uh, of this species, and you know

686
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:44,840
Speaker 1: it's it's cute, but it doesn't really look like anything

687
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: other than some sort of a fly or insect um.

688
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: But yeah, when you start looking at these these electron

689
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: microscope images, yeah, then then it takes on this bio

690
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: mechanical kind of reality and it's, uh, yeah, it's quite

691
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 1: unlike anything else I've seen. So it is this animal,

692
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: the the S. S. Coleopterus. Well, this is an insect

693
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: that is again known as a plant hopper. I think

694
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:11,440
Speaker 1: you'll normally find them crawling around on bits of ivy

695
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 1: in Europe and North Africa, and so they're they're very

696
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: very small. They're usually just about three millimeters long at

697
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: maturity um and so they'll go around grazing on ivy leaves.

698
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:25,680
Speaker 1: And the discovery that's announced in this report is that

699
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: the juveniles of this species, so not the adults, but

700
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: the nymphs. The juveniles, they have these interlocking gear teeth

701
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: on their back legs which allow them to rotate their

702
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: legs in perfect synchronization when they are setting up a jump.

703
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:49,839
Speaker 1: So these tiny insects have have their main defense against predators.

704
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:52,640
Speaker 1: And it's not clear exactly what predator this is most

705
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: adapted against, so I don't know if this would be,

706
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: you know, against the possibility of being eaten by a

707
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:02,239
Speaker 1: large mammal that's grazing on foliage, or being pounced on

708
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 1: by a parasitic wasp or some other kind of smaller

709
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: insect predator or spider or something that's not quite known

710
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: for sure, but but there it is probably some kind

711
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:16,319
Speaker 1: of survival defensive adaptation that this creature needs to be

712
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: able to jump far and jump fast, and they are

713
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing jumpers in all of nature.

714
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: I was watching an interview with one of the authors

715
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: of the study, Malcolm Burrows, in which he talks about

716
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 1: the jumping mechanism, and so the s s insect will

717
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: take off at a at a jump of about five

718
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: meters per second or more than eight miles per hour,

719
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: which for a tiny insect like this is pretty fast.

720
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: It accelerates to its jumping speed in less than a millisecond.

721
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:51,279
Speaker 1: And so the way Burrows explain this is that this

722
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: insect experiences absolutely unfathomable G forces as it takes off

723
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: because its acceleration is so fast. He puts it at

724
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:05,360
Speaker 1: five hundred or even seven hundred g's, which if you

725
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:07,919
Speaker 1: look at the amount of g's that humans are able

726
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: to tolerate, it's like the amount you can tolerate is

727
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:14,799
Speaker 1: a factor of how long you are subjected to them.

728
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: But you know, usually for humans, the the the acceleration

729
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:22,839
Speaker 1: we can tolerate in gs, the maximum is like a

730
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:25,439
Speaker 1: factor of a few tens, you know, but this would

731
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,919
Speaker 1: be hundreds. Yeah, this is impressive. So this insect has

732
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:34,280
Speaker 1: this amazingly fast, amazingly powerful jump that can just catapult

733
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: It's like it's shooting itself out of a cannon using

734
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 1: the power of its two hind legs. And what was

735
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: documented in this paper by by Burrows and Sutton is

736
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 1: that they they captured imagery of gear mechanisms on the

737
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: hind legs interlocking using electron microscopy and high speed video recording. Uh,

738
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: and and again, the purpose that they found is that

739
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: these interlocking gear teeth are useful for synchronizing the motion

740
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: of the legs. Now, why would synchronization of the leg

741
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: movement be so important that it would have its own

742
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:14,240
Speaker 1: evolved mechanism, which is, as far as we know, unique

743
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom. Well, apparently it's because coordination of

744
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 1: the timing on the two legs is necessary for this

745
00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful sort of cannon shot jump to be effective.

746
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: So I was reading about this in one of the

747
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: press releases about the about the study, and what the

748
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 1: author's here found is that a lack of synchronization between

749
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 1: the legs at launch could cause an uncontrolled what they

750
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: call yaw rotation. So if you if you picture an airplane,

751
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 1: you know you've got the different uh, the different ways

752
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: that you can change the motion of the airplane. You've

753
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 1: got pitch, role and yaw. So pitch would be tipping

754
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: the nose of the airplane up or down. Role would

755
00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,759
Speaker 1: be raising. That would be rolling the airplane. You know,

756
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: ray s the wings relative to each other, and then

757
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 1: yaw is twisting side to side. If you can imagine

758
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 1: an insect, that's sort of catapulting itself in this spectacular

759
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: jump with two with pushing off with the two hind

760
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: legs at the same time. If one leg pushes off

761
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 1: faster than the other one, you can imagine that it's

762
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: going to send the insects sort of twisting out of

763
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 1: control in its path, which obviously interferes with landing where

764
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: it's trying to land. Now, one question would be why

765
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: the need for a mechanical gear for synchronization. What why

766
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: does this need to be on the insects exoskeleton. Why

767
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: wouldn't the insect just synchronize the action of its legs

768
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: through the nervous system like pretty much any other animal would, Right, Like,

769
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 1: if you are jumping, you are able to synchronize the

770
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 1: motion of your legs through neural mechanisms with your brain

771
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: and your nervous system sort of trying to control them

772
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,839
Speaker 1: through normal motor function, and then getting feedback from the

773
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: feelings of your legs from like your appropriate reception and

774
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:06,320
Speaker 1: stuff and and tactle sensations to to try to time

775
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: the jump together and correct for any imbalances in real time. Well,

776
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: apparently the insect can't do that because the problem is

777
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: it's jump is too fast to synchronize through the nervous system.

778
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:23,000
Speaker 1: The acceleration leading into the jump happens so quickly that

779
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: the nervous system cannot do real time feedback to coordinate it,

780
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: so it needs this mechanical lock on the legs themselves

781
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:35,280
Speaker 1: to make sure synchronization is happening, because the insects nervous

782
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:38,959
Speaker 1: system can't talk to itself fast enough to make sure

783
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: that the that the jump is on target. In their

784
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:44,640
Speaker 1: In their press release, author Malcolm Burrows summarized it like

785
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: this quote. The precise synchronization would be impossible to achieve

786
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 1: through a nervous system, as neural impulses would take far

787
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: too long for the extraordinarily tight coordination required by developing

788
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: mechanical gears, the can just in nerve signals to its

789
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: muscles to produce roughly the same amount of force. Then,

790
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 1: if one leg starts to propel the jump, the gears

791
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: will interlock, creating absolute synchronicity and is the skeleton is

792
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: used to solve a complex problem that the brain and

793
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: nervous system can't. This emphasizes the importance of considering the

794
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 1: properties of the skeleton in how movement is produced, and

795
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 1: this was really interesting to me because it also comes

796
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: back to you could maybe even consider this a case

797
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: of sort of supplementing the cognitive abilities of the nervous system,

798
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: sort of embodied cognition, allowing the body to do math

799
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: for you that your brain and nervous system can't handle. Yeah,

800
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: because essentially it's it's it's a physical way of solving

801
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: a problem that is beyond cognitive ability, um and and

802
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:57,400
Speaker 1: and and really when we're talking about the g forces

803
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: pulled here, and I think this is beyond spaceflight. So

804
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 1: when we talk about like humans have not evolved to

805
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: travel in space or to deal with certain speeds or

806
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: or physical realities like, this is a case here where

807
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 1: this this creature is is essentially engaging in those kinds

808
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: of speeds, those kinds of rapid accelerations. Uh So it's yeah,

809
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about here. Yeah, the body moves

810
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,879
Speaker 1: too fast for the nervous system to make sense of,

811
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:27,280
Speaker 1: so it just offloads that that computation that the motor

812
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,920
Speaker 1: parts of the nervous system might do naturally, offloads that

813
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 1: onto the skeleton. Now, the exoskeleton of the insect is

814
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: doing the math for you, kind of like an analog

815
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:41,879
Speaker 1: computer would like the antique theorem mechanism wow wow. So

816
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 1: to take a slightly closer look at these teeth at

817
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: the gears on the hind legs. They're located on the

818
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: backs of the strong hind legs that the s s

819
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 1: insect uses to jump um there on the parts of

820
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: the legs known as the trocanta, and it's actually a

821
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: human skeleton has trocanta to their They're sort of on

822
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: the upper part of the femur, near where the femur

823
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: would would connect to the pelvis. And these these insects

824
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 1: tend to have somewhere between ten to twelve teeth on

825
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: their gears. But while it seems to vary between the insects,

826
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: the insect always has the same amount of teeth on

827
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: each side. Within itself, each tooth is about eighty micrometers wide,

828
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: so eighty millionths of a meter. And there are some

829
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: interesting engineered features of of these gear teeth within the

830
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 1: body that have been created by the evolutionary process that

831
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,400
Speaker 1: gives rise to them. Here, the teeth have rounded corners

832
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,240
Speaker 1: at the point of contact, and this is useful, apparently

833
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: because it would help prevent the gears from being sheared

834
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: off or broken off if there is a slight misalignment

835
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: during a jump. And then another interesting thing about them

836
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: is that they are differently shaped than most gears we

837
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: use in the technological world, because usually gears made by

838
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 1: humans tend to have some metrical teeth, right, you know,

839
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:06,240
Speaker 1: there's sort of curved straight out from the gear strip surface,

840
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 1: But in these the teeth are not quite symmetrical. They're

841
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: sort of angled out. And it's because this gear only

842
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,839
Speaker 1: needs to work one way, so like, after the launch

843
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: is done, the gear teeth can just separate from each

844
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: other and they don't need to roll backwards in in

845
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 1: the direction opposite from which they came. It's a one

846
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: way gear. Yeah, and you definitely get that from looking

847
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: at the image. It feels like some sort of a

848
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:34,880
Speaker 1: biomechanical um, you know, firing mechanism, right, A firing mechanism

849
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: is a is a good way to compare it, because again,

850
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 1: it doesn't go both ways and it doesn't need to

851
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: roll all the way around. It's just sort of a

852
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:44,360
Speaker 1: strip of interlocking teeth that doesn't complete a full circle.

853
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 1: And it only and it only rolls one way only

854
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 1: on launch. Yeah, like it kind of looks like if

855
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: hr gear designed a flint lock. Yeah, or maybe if

856
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: David Cronenberg did you know? Yeah? Oh, but so there

857
00:49:57,440 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: was a really interesting thing about this research, the question

858
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:03,280
Speaker 1: of how did they figure out that these gear teeth

859
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: locked for synchronization while launching the jump? Right? Like, how

860
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:10,240
Speaker 1: do how did they observe that? Well, apparently the authors

861
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: here used a dead insect. They used an insect corpse,

862
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: and what they did was they they took the dead

863
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:21,840
Speaker 1: insects legs and rotated them back into the jump launching position,

864
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 1: and then the researchers used an electrical stimulus to cause

865
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: a contraction in the jumping muscle of only one of

866
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 1: the legs. Okay, so they they stimulate only one leg

867
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:35,800
Speaker 1: as if it has been told by the brain to jump.

868
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: But because the gear teeth were locked when the legs

869
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:44,640
Speaker 1: were in jump readying position, the insects legs both performed

870
00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:47,439
Speaker 1: the launching motion, even the dead leg on the other

871
00:50:47,480 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 1: side that had not been electrically stimulated, and the insect

872
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 1: leapt straightforward, so you could stimulate only one of the

873
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 1: two legs, kind of like how an airplane can fly

874
00:50:57,120 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: with only one engine. You know, you only need to

875
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,560
Speaker 1: stimulate one of the legs, and the gears keep both

876
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:06,520
Speaker 1: legs locked in sync. Now there's another interesting question here,

877
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: why only the juveniles. I think I already mentioned that

878
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:15,280
Speaker 1: the adult insects don't have these interlocking gear teeth. They've

879
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:18,399
Speaker 1: got a feature that's more common, more like what you'd

880
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 1: see in a lot of other jumping insects, which is

881
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: not gear teeth, but just sort of um bumps or

882
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: friction pads, So their back legs might touch each other

883
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: and and the touching their helps keep the jump synchronized.

884
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: But they don't actually have interlocking teeth. It's more just

885
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: kind of like pushing to surfaces together that grip each

886
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:43,600
Speaker 1: other pretty well. In another study by Burrows, he noted

887
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:47,680
Speaker 1: that this is achieved by quote mechanical actions between small

888
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: protrusions from each Trochantera, which fluoresce bright blue under specific

889
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:56,320
Speaker 1: wavelengths of ultraviolet light and which touch at the midline

890
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: when the legs are cocked before a jump. So the

891
00:51:58,840 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 1: adults are touching parts of their back legs together to

892
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: help synchronize a jump, but they don't have gear teeth.

893
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: And the hypothesized explanation for the difference here is that

894
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:13,759
Speaker 1: is this Insects go through periods of molting as they grow. Right,

895
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: So an insect, as it gets bigger and bigger, it

896
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 1: will shed its old hard exoskeleton and then it will

897
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: grow bigger and allow a new exoskeleton to harden. But

898
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 1: the adult exoskeleton at full maturity, it lacks these interlocking

899
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: gear teeth. And the idea is maybe the adults don't

900
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: have the teeth because if the teeth on the jumping

901
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:38,560
Speaker 1: mechanism were to break or get sheared off but by error,

902
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: this would sort of break their ability to jump. And

903
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 1: so once the adult is in full molted form and

904
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 1: it's not going to shed its exoskeleton again, it needs

905
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:52,279
Speaker 1: to have a less fragile mechanism. But the younger's, the

906
00:52:52,560 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: younger ones, the juveniles, because they will go through multiple

907
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 1: moltings and can grow new gear teeth if they're old

908
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:01,800
Speaker 1: gear teeth break, they pay less of a price for

909
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: having this somewhat fragile mechanism. Okay, So here we see

910
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 1: sort of in in their early stages, the advantages of

911
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: having an an exo skeleton, and then in in later

912
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:17,359
Speaker 1: life the disadvantages of having an exoskeleton and that you're

913
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: not going to get another one, right, And so when

914
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: you're not going to get another one, it makes more

915
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: sense for evolution to supply you with more durable mechanisms

916
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: that aren't going to possibly like kill you if if

917
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: they break right, there would be a survival advantage in

918
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 1: having a jumping mechanism that's not going to It's not

919
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: going to be like a Boba Fett's um jet pack

920
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 1: firing off at a weird angle and sending you into

921
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: the sarlac. Right, But that's just a hypothesized explanation for

922
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:47,959
Speaker 1: the difference between the juveniles and adults. Ultimately, we don't

923
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:50,840
Speaker 1: know for sure there and as far as I can tell,

924
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: this is still the only known toothed gear in the

925
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. That there may have been something since then

926
00:53:57,080 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: that I wasn't able to track down, but it looks

927
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: like this is still the only one. Yeah, well, this

928
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: is fascinating. It kind of brings me back to the

929
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:09,120
Speaker 1: biobmetics question earlier. You know, um an evolution solving particular

930
00:54:09,160 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: engineering problems over time, and this is an example where

931
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: the the engineering problem is extreme enough that and the

932
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:21,600
Speaker 1: and the circumstances of its its lifespan enable the sort

933
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: of answer to evolve and take place. Yeah. Yeah. Can

934
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:27,479
Speaker 1: you imagine if you had gear teeth on your inner

935
00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:32,279
Speaker 1: thighs that helps you jump, it seems uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah,

936
00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 1: I'd have to have an exoskeleton too for this place.

937
00:54:35,760 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I'd have to have some other kind of

938
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: weird arrangement, like you would have to be bone spurs

939
00:54:40,920 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 1: or keith that grow back, I guess, because that would

940
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: again you'd have to have the situation of what what

941
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: do you do about the wear and tear of this

942
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: the physical mechanics here, I mean, it doesn't really make

943
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 1: sense for our bodies because that wouldn't that wouldn't be

944
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: how we jump anyway, or like I need to work

945
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: differently for that to make sense. Yeah. Yeah, So again

946
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 1: we come down to a very specific, evolved answer to

947
00:55:02,040 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: a specific problem that yeah, you're just not going to

948
00:55:04,560 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 1: see in in in other organisms. But I am still

949
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:10,919
Speaker 1: in memorative the idea that in a way, these these

950
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: gear teeth on the insects legs are a kind of computer.

951
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: They're doing a kind of mathematical processing for the animal.

952
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:22,480
Speaker 1: This is the this is the computer of the thighs. Yeah.

953
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:25,480
Speaker 1: And and also it's interesting too that no matter how

954
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: no matter how much you know, humanity clung to the

955
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: wheel and to gears and and saw this as their

956
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:35,279
Speaker 1: technological achievement. Uh. Here we have an example of evolution

957
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 1: once more, beating humanity to the punch. Uh. So well,

958
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: before the Greeks of Alexandria were devising their uh their gear,

959
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,800
Speaker 1: you know complexities. Uh, this creature already had the gears

960
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: right there in its thighs. These gears are hopping. Yeah. Well,

961
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: this was fun. I enjoyed talking about everything from We

962
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: had a little bit of an intervention episode. Uh in here,

963
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 1: we had some biology, we had a little bit of

964
00:56:03,080 --> 00:56:06,279
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore. So it would be interesting to come

965
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 1: back to this. And and we talked about potentially covering

966
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:12,320
Speaker 1: screws and screws in nature in this episode, but perhaps

967
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,319
Speaker 1: that would make for its own future episode. Oh yeah,

968
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: there are actually a few things in nature that you

969
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:20,279
Speaker 1: could argue or screws. Yeah, and then and and of

970
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 1: course the invention of the screw and uh and so

971
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:26,239
Speaker 1: forth is also quite interesting. All right, we're gonna go

972
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: and close it up then, but we'd love to hear

973
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. UM, certainly reach out to us,

974
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: get in touch with us in the meantime, if you

975
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow

976
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:37,200
Speaker 1: Your Mind Core episodes publishing the Stuff to Blow Your

977
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:41,239
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sandwich between them,

978
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: we have an Artifact episode or for the months of

979
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:46,880
Speaker 1: September and October. Anyway, it's going to be the Monster Fact.

980
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: It's gonna We're gonna take on more of a monstrous

981
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:53,480
Speaker 1: form for the holidays here and then it will likely

982
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: revert back to the Artifact. We have listener mail on Monday's.

983
00:56:57,920 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: We have a little weird house cinema on Fridays. That's

984
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 1: our I'm just to discuss a weird film, and then

985
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:04,920
Speaker 1: we have a rerun over the weekend. Huge things. As

986
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:08,799
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

987
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:10,279
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

988
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other suggest topic for

989
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:15,400
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us

990
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast. Stuff

991
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:28,440
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

992
00:57:28,800 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio that the iHeart

993
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:33,920
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

994
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Speaker 1: favorite shows