Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Joe is away at the moment, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and slot in a vault episode for today.
Speaker 1: This is just helping us deal with some some some
Speaker 1: late summer or at least late summer break um disruptions here,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna go ahead and play Creature of the Gear.
Speaker 1: This originally published on nine to one. UH. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting look at gears and when did humans invent gears?
Speaker 1: And also what do we find that are like gears
Speaker 1: in nature? And we'll even look at a few wheel
Speaker 1: based mythological creatures. Now, don't fret, we're gonna be back
Speaker 1: on Thursday. We should be back on Thursday with a
Speaker 1: fun interview episode and then we'll be back into the
Speaker 1: regular schedule right after that. So, without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: dive right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Today we're gonna be in a way we're
Speaker 1: continuing on past discussions concerning the wheel Um, also past
Speaker 1: discussions concerning UH like rolling creatures. But we're gonna be
Speaker 1: getting more specifically into the realm of the gear in
Speaker 1: this episode. Now, I have to say, I'm anytime we
Speaker 1: get into one of these discussions, I'm always reminded of
Speaker 1: a few lines from The Omega Man. Uh. In part
Speaker 1: because it's in its own way, it's a weirdly interesting film. Also,
Speaker 1: I probably listened to a bit too much Wide Zombie
Speaker 1: back in high school. Uh, because there's some or maybe
Speaker 1: it's a zombie song that that samples this movie. But
Speaker 1: there's this one wonderful line from Anthony zerve Is character says,
Speaker 1: the creature of the Wheel, the lord of the infernal engines. Um,
Speaker 1: what is he talking about the vampires? Or is he
Speaker 1: talking about about Charlton Heston. He's talking about old Chuck Heston. There,
Speaker 1: he's the This man represents the wheel and the technology
Speaker 1: of the wheel and all the terrible things that we're
Speaker 1: done with it. Um, but wait, I recall the vampires
Speaker 1: using wheeled vehicles. Do they not? Don't they have like
Speaker 1: a sort of zombie mobile. Yeah, I'm not saying it
Speaker 1: makes sense. I'm not saying it's a fair criticism. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that Anthony Zerva had a really cool voice,
Speaker 1: and uh and when he said these lines, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds cool. I don't know what it means exactly,
Speaker 1: but it sounds pretty cool. You know, it would be
Speaker 1: a really good movie Monster Bug Fight and and both
Speaker 1: are Charlton Heston movies. If you pick the vampires from
Speaker 1: the Omega Man versus the Adam Bomb Cult from the
Speaker 1: second Planet of the Apes movie, you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty similar. I think, pretty similar morbid humanoids. But I
Speaker 1: would like to see them duke it out and Charlton Heston,
Speaker 1: I guess can just watch this time. Yeah, what was
Speaker 1: that beneath the Planet of the Apes? I always like that.
Speaker 1: As far as any eight movies that came after Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes, that one, that one always appealed to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. Uh. I remember there's a part
Speaker 1: where they sing a hymn to the atom bomb. You remember, Yep,
Speaker 1: they have just a big old atom bomb in there
Speaker 1: that they worship. I think it's like a minor key
Speaker 1: version of all things bright and beautiful. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: all these things are connected because we're dealing with with
Speaker 1: a human technology and the idea of worshiping the technology,
Speaker 1: being bound to the technology and and the wheel, and
Speaker 1: by virtue of the wheel, gears and machines being this
Speaker 1: thing that is particular to human beings, something that that
Speaker 1: that we have created. It's a part of our various civilizations.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting to think about humans as
Speaker 1: creatures of the wheel empire, because of course there have
Speaker 1: been plenty of cultures and civilizations where the wheel, at
Speaker 1: least in terms of of vehicles, has played no practical role.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it you know, that you had the wheel as
Speaker 1: a toy, perhaps it was used as a spiritual aid
Speaker 1: or device that could serve as a metaphor. But then certainly,
Speaker 1: by the time we get to the you know, the
Speaker 1: age of roads and engines, humanity very visibly becomes a
Speaker 1: people of the wheel. But then, as we'll discussed in
Speaker 1: this episode a little bit, you also get into this
Speaker 1: domain of wheels and gears, of of wheels doing things
Speaker 1: that they don't have have anything directly to do with vehicles,
Speaker 1: but it's all about using the energy of the wheel
Speaker 1: to do other things. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: and this also makes me think of the field of biomemetics,
Speaker 1: bioble metics, of course, as when we we say, okay,
Speaker 1: I have an engineering problem. I need to turn to
Speaker 1: the realm of nature for a possible solution, because I've
Speaker 1: only been working on this engineering problem for you know,
Speaker 1: X amount of time. But evolution has been working around
Speaker 1: similar engineering problems just for for millions of years. So
Speaker 1: perhaps we can we can cheat off of nature in
Speaker 1: that regard. But of course, one of the problems is
Speaker 1: that the wheel almost never comes up in nature itself.
Speaker 1: Gears almost never come up in nature, So biomometically, you're
Speaker 1: not going to turn to nature and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: well there's a there's a solution involving the wheel that
Speaker 1: I might use. Oh let's look and see how this
Speaker 1: particular creature uses rotary blades to fly that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually really enjoy thinking about this in
Speaker 1: terms of comparing animal bodies to different types of machines,
Speaker 1: machine components, simple machines, you know, the stuff you learn
Speaker 1: about in those first physics lessons when you're a kid.
Speaker 1: So you know, you know the lever and the inclined
Speaker 1: plane and the and the pulley and the screw and
Speaker 1: all that. And I feel like when you do this exercise.
Speaker 1: There is one type of simple machine that absolutely dominates
Speaker 1: the landscape of biology, and that is the lever. Biology
Speaker 1: is full of levers. I think you could make an
Speaker 1: argument that almost all of the skeletal muscle in our
Speaker 1: bodies is designed by evolution for the operation of levers.
Speaker 1: Maybe there are some exceptions that aren't occurring to me,
Speaker 1: but I would say, if not all of them, almost
Speaker 1: all of them. So, for example, when you use your
Speaker 1: bicep to do an arm curl, you're curling a dumbbell.
Speaker 1: You know, the muscle primarily the bicep. I think also
Speaker 1: somewhat the muscle in your forearm is exerting the effort.
Speaker 1: The load is what's in your hand, it's your your fist,
Speaker 1: and the full crum is the elbow joint, and of
Speaker 1: course the bone is the lever. So I think most
Speaker 1: of the body's gross motor activity is based on the
Speaker 1: action of levers with joints as the fulcrum. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then but then when you start looking for other simple
Speaker 1: machines and animal bodies, you can turn up some examples,
Speaker 1: but it suddenly gets a lot more difficult to scope
Speaker 1: things out. Like you can maybe make the argument that
Speaker 1: sharp teeth and fangs, or a type of wedge which
Speaker 1: is technically a form of the simple machine known as
Speaker 1: the inclined plane. But then there are other types of
Speaker 1: of machines and machine parts that are pretty rare or
Speaker 1: even non existent in nature, and the wheel is a
Speaker 1: good one of these. There there are really only a
Speaker 1: few examples that people can point to of things that
Speaker 1: might be considered freely rotating wheels and axles. In biology,
Speaker 1: sometimes people bring up versions of the bacterial flagella as
Speaker 1: something that sort of operates like a wheel, kind of
Speaker 1: spinning like a propeller to move the bacterium uh through
Speaker 1: through a liquid medium and uh. And then there are
Speaker 1: also I think some possible parts of animal digestive systems
Speaker 1: that may function kind of like a wheel. But animal
Speaker 1: body plans clearly favored the versatility of legs based on
Speaker 1: levers instead of wheels. And you can make a few
Speaker 1: different arguments about why evolution overwhelmingly goes that route. You
Speaker 1: could you could say maybe it has something to do
Speaker 1: with just morphological precedence, like that levers are easier to
Speaker 1: evolve from the pre existing forms that were available for
Speaker 1: animal bodies to work on when in you know, adapting
Speaker 1: through small mutations. But you could also argue that there
Speaker 1: are natural uh, terrain negotiation advantages to levers. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're not in a world of clean paved surfaces,
Speaker 1: wheels can actually pretty easily get hung up on things,
Speaker 1: and you need the articulation of levers and limbs in
Speaker 1: order to say, uh, you know, get over rugged terrain,
Speaker 1: or to flip yourself back over if you fall on
Speaker 1: your back. I think it's also telling that when we
Speaker 1: look to the world of mythological creatures and beings, we
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of wheels, or at least we
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of wheels that are innately organic.
Speaker 1: And then if we do, we tend not to see
Speaker 1: a creature or a being that is supposed to be
Speaker 1: of this world. Um and uh. And perhaps there's some
Speaker 1: exception to this rule that I'm overlooking, but I thought
Speaker 1: I might bring up a couple of examples. One and
Speaker 1: I know I've mentioned this this critter on the show before.
Speaker 1: There is a demon by the name of Bure. I
Speaker 1: believe it is b U e R described in Johann
Speaker 1: of Viers fifteen sixty three. Grimore Pseudo Monarchia demonium Um.
Speaker 1: This covers a number of different of supposed demons, and
Speaker 1: this demon Buer is the great President of Hell, kind
Speaker 1: of a goblin faced lion with kind of a wheel
Speaker 1: of five legs going around it, which I find reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the pet rail wheel which I mentioned in a
Speaker 1: previous Artifact episode, an experimental tank wheel that had legs
Speaker 1: on it. Um. So as the wheel turns, the legs
Speaker 1: are are placed down onto the ground. Uh this case,
Speaker 1: they are goat legs, and I've I've read that they're
Speaker 1: supposed to symbolize the demon's ability to move in any direction.
Speaker 1: So I'm not entirely sure that we're even supposed to
Speaker 1: imagine this creature turning like a wheel or like a
Speaker 1: clock or something. But when I look at him, that's
Speaker 1: all I can see. Like he basically moves on the
Speaker 1: page or on the screen when I stare at him,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine I'm kind of lumping around along.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I tend to think about um when
Speaker 1: wheels are imagined in the imagery of mythology and religion,
Speaker 1: it's often to say something about the fact that the
Speaker 1: vision is boggling the mind. It You know that it's
Speaker 1: transcending familiar forms and just completely awing you and humbling
Speaker 1: you with confusion. Uh. So I think, for example, about
Speaker 1: Ezekiel's vision of the wheels in in in the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 1: and and how the wheels there. Uh, it seems to
Speaker 1: me at least, I mean, I'm you know, no professional
Speaker 1: legs ag eat on that, but it seems like that
Speaker 1: they symbolize something about a concept that sort of like
Speaker 1: surpasses human understanding. You're looking at something that your mind
Speaker 1: can't even fit around. Yeah, I mean, we can easily
Speaker 1: imagine the various connotations that are being drawn in there
Speaker 1: when you have a wheel like appearing in the sky,
Speaker 1: because you have the idea of technology, something created by
Speaker 1: rational beings. You have the idea of sort of cosmic
Speaker 1: wheels and circular forms related to the movements of the
Speaker 1: stars and the planets and so forth. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the idea too that if if this is mixed with
Speaker 1: some sort of biological or faintly biological or hybrid form,
Speaker 1: that that is again something that is not reflected in nature.
Speaker 1: It is something there is something inherently unnatural about this,
Speaker 1: this hybrid being that is not even just part animal
Speaker 1: and part human or part of this animal and part
Speaker 1: that animal, but part flesh being and part cosmic or
Speaker 1: technological entity. Now then again, in nature and biology, you
Speaker 1: do find all kinds of round mechanism and round bodies
Speaker 1: and even rolling forms. You know, lots of animals can
Speaker 1: roll up into a round shape and then roll their
Speaker 1: whole body. What you what really seems to be unusual
Speaker 1: in nature, And again maybe you can only find a
Speaker 1: few examples here and there that would seem to fit.
Speaker 1: This is a freely rotating wheel that somehow transfers energy
Speaker 1: within a broader context. So like the wheel and axle
Speaker 1: on a car that moves the car body the car,
Speaker 1: you know, the chassiss stationary and then the wheel turns
Speaker 1: to propel it forward. That's what you really don't find
Speaker 1: much of in nature. But if you're content with just
Speaker 1: like something round that rolls, you can have a wheel
Speaker 1: spider rolling down a dune. You can have bugs that
Speaker 1: roll up into round shapes and roll all over the place.
Speaker 1: Even some mammals do that. Yeah, there are some examples
Speaker 1: of creatures that that form rolling shapes, granted if the
Speaker 1: topography is correct. Uh. There's also, of course, the example
Speaker 1: of goat poop I've seen brought up. Granted, goat poop
Speaker 1: is not itself alive, but it is the product of
Speaker 1: of a biological organism. And the idea here is that
Speaker 1: the goat poop is nice and rounds so that it
Speaker 1: can roll away and hide itself. Uh in these kind
Speaker 1: of environments. But I advocate for goat poop personhood, okay, um.
Speaker 1: But but of course, one of the things about any
Speaker 1: of these rolling creatures is, of course, if it's gonna roll,
Speaker 1: it's everything's gonna roll. There's not gonna be a stationary
Speaker 1: part all of the rolling creature as in the same
Speaker 1: way that say, there would be the cart portion of
Speaker 1: an ox cart would remain the same. Uh. But when
Speaker 1: we look to some of our supernatural models, we do
Speaker 1: see things that work like this, of course in a
Speaker 1: very supernatural form. Uh. There's a wonderful wheel creature in um.
Speaker 1: In Japanese traditions, there's a yokai known as one you know,
Speaker 1: the fire wheel, and he's a he's a pretty famous yokai.
Speaker 1: You've you've probably seen images of him, especially if you
Speaker 1: partake of various like anime um products, because he pops
Speaker 1: up in a lot of things. I think he pops
Speaker 1: up in some video games as well. He looks like
Speaker 1: a grumpy, giant human head sort of haloed by a burning,
Speaker 1: smoking ghost wheel, and we get the impression that the
Speaker 1: wheel is moving in the head is remaining stationary. He
Speaker 1: said to guard the gates of Hell, and I've also
Speaker 1: read that in life he said to have been a
Speaker 1: cruel ruler who burned people on the wheel, so this
Speaker 1: is kind of his punishment. He haunts them the roads
Speaker 1: at night. He made drag souls back to Hell. And
Speaker 1: there's also a female variation called Catawaga. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: would seem to be more like that mechanism you don't
Speaker 1: really find in nature, if the head stays stationary while
Speaker 1: the wheel turns around it right. And of course in
Speaker 1: this too we have just a it's not even pretending
Speaker 1: to be an entirely organic creature. It is this supernatural
Speaker 1: um combination of two or three different things. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty popular figure. The Power Rangers have
Speaker 1: even fought him on occasion. Um shows up in very
Speaker 1: his anime titles, and I have to say sometimes he
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like Dr robot Nick from The
Speaker 1: Sonic games. So I wonder if Dr Robotnick was at
Speaker 1: all inspired by this Yokai you know, a grumpy faced
Speaker 1: man machine with kind of a spherical design. Because Dr
Speaker 1: Robotnick is he's the Eggman, you know, so he's often
Speaker 1: in some kind of little like little circular pod. Why
Speaker 1: do I want to say that the the Dr Robotnick
Speaker 1: was supposed to be based on the appearance of Theodore Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? He does look
Speaker 1: like Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah, so that might be it instead.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I couldn't. I briefly looked around. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything that connected at Dr Robotnick. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot of scholarship on Dr Robotnick, it seems unless
Speaker 1: I'm missing it. And if I am missing it, please
Speaker 1: send it to me. I want to read your your thesis, Okay.
Speaker 1: Our new podcast is an oral history of Dr Robotnick. Um,
Speaker 1: now there's a there's another throw some I am the Walrus,
Speaker 1: and some Teddy Roosevelt and little Blender and then there
Speaker 1: you go, oh, yeah, there's definitely a It seems like
Speaker 1: there's definitely a Beatles connection there as well. Now, um,
Speaker 1: I was I was reading about this, particularly Yokai, and
Speaker 1: there's one more little story I ran across it. I
Speaker 1: have to share. This was I found this on Matthew Myers.
Speaker 1: Yokai dot com has a profile of when Udo and
Speaker 1: shares a brief story that I haven't found anywhere else.
Speaker 1: But it's it's too good not to share, and I'm
Speaker 1: probably just missing accounts of it elsewhere. But quoting this website,
Speaker 1: one famous story from Kyoto tells a woman who peeked
Speaker 1: out her window at one Udo as he passed through town.
Speaker 1: The demon snarled at her, saying, instead of looking at me,
Speaker 1: have a look at your own child. She looked back
Speaker 1: at her baby, who was screaming on the floor in
Speaker 1: a pool of blood. Both of its legs had been
Speaker 1: completely torn from its body. When she looked back out
Speaker 1: at one Udo, that child's legs were in its mouth,
Speaker 1: being eaten by the mad, grinning monster. What so it
Speaker 1: did he teleport that? I don't Okay, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. He's eating those baby legs. He's a bad dude.
Speaker 1: That that's a bad dude. So anyway, I'll stop there
Speaker 1: with my wheel creatures. But this suffice to say, just
Speaker 1: just bringing these up to drive home the fact that
Speaker 1: that I think we we have long not expected to
Speaker 1: find wheels and gears in the natural world. They are
Speaker 1: things of our creation. We are the people of the wheel,
Speaker 1: well especially the gear. So that that was my original
Speaker 1: idea for the episode, was to focus on the idea
Speaker 1: of artificial gears versus possible examples of gears in nature.
Speaker 1: And while you can make arguments for a few examples
Speaker 1: of wheels in nature, the gear is really a different
Speaker 1: kind of story, except for this one really cool example
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be looking at today. So what is
Speaker 1: a gear? Well, you've seen gears before, but to actually
Speaker 1: define the concept what counts as a gear, I think
Speaker 1: I think you could say a gear is a set
Speaker 1: of rotating machine parts with interlocking teeth. So these can
Speaker 1: often take the form of a kind of flat circular plate,
Speaker 1: but they can also take the form of, say like
Speaker 1: a long shaft that has teeth on the shaft, or
Speaker 1: they can even be non circular. There are more kind
Speaker 1: of square shaped gears and gears of all different kinds
Speaker 1: of shapes and sizes, but what's common to all of
Speaker 1: them is that they have teeth that interlock with each other,
Speaker 1: and they use those teeth and rotation to transfer force
Speaker 1: rotational force known as torque, So they can transfer torque
Speaker 1: from one place to another, and they can also sometimes
Speaker 1: transform that force in some way as it is transferred.
Speaker 1: So gears can change the direction of rotational force. Like
Speaker 1: if you picture two interlocking wheel shaped gears, you rotate
Speaker 1: one of them clockwise, will actually rotate the other one counterclockwise,
Speaker 1: so that'll that'll perform one kind of change. Or you
Speaker 1: can change the orientation of the torque by having the
Speaker 1: gears interlock at an angle. So think of for example, well,
Speaker 1: how if you imagine a car that has the engine
Speaker 1: sending its rotational force its torque through a drive shaft
Speaker 1: that runs along the length of the car, then that
Speaker 1: energy has to be transferred to the wheels to get
Speaker 1: them rotating in the direction that's parallel to the car's motion.
Speaker 1: So there are gears that interlock at angles there to
Speaker 1: transfer that force eventually to the wheels. But gears can
Speaker 1: also be used to gain mechanical advantage or change the
Speaker 1: speed of a rotational force in a mathematically predictable way. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you use a bigger gear with more
Speaker 1: teeth to spin a smaller gear with fewer teeth. The
Speaker 1: smaller gear will spin faster than the larger one, and
Speaker 1: the change in speed will be proportional to the ratio
Speaker 1: of the tooth counts between the two differently sized gears.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you use a gear to drive
Speaker 1: a second gear with half as many teeth as the
Speaker 1: first gear, it will spin exactly twice as fast. To
Speaker 1: a certain extent, it almost feels like like wheel wizardry,
Speaker 1: because the wheel is doing its thing and and and
Speaker 1: if you're not going to do anything else, you can Okay,
Speaker 1: you can do various tasks and carry out various acts
Speaker 1: by interacting with that wheel on its terms. But by
Speaker 1: the use of gears, you can transform it. You can
Speaker 1: you can make the gear work in other ways. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's one of the fascinating things.
Speaker 1: So when we're when we're talking about sort of that
Speaker 1: lead from from wheel to gear, and of course, and
Speaker 1: this could be just as simple as well. I don't
Speaker 1: want horizontal rotation, I want vertical rotation, that sort of thing, right,
Speaker 1: But it can also this last thing I mentioned about
Speaker 1: the predictable mathematical relationships between the intervals of rotation of
Speaker 1: tooth to gears. The fact that toothed gears are quantized
Speaker 1: right that you can like put a number to the
Speaker 1: number of teeth on a rotation that allows you to
Speaker 1: tightly control the ratios you know, how fast one spins
Speaker 1: in relationship to another one. That actually has made gears
Speaker 1: useful not just for say, applying force to things like
Speaker 1: you know, powering a machine or something, but also for
Speaker 1: tasks related to more abstract types of work, like measurements
Speaker 1: such as measuring intervals of time UM, and not just
Speaker 1: in straightforward timekeeping devices like clocks. Of course, gears are
Speaker 1: very important in in UM analog clocks, but even more
Speaker 1: complex applications like we see in one of the most
Speaker 1: intriguing artifacts from the ancient world, known as the Antiquothera mechanism,
Speaker 1: which is widely considered the first known computer not a
Speaker 1: digital computer, but an analog computer, a computer that uses
Speaker 1: gears instead of semiconductors for information processing. UH. The Antikothera
Speaker 1: mechanism was discovered in a Roman era shipwreck in the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean around the r nineteen hundred UH, and this shipwreck
Speaker 1: traced back to a ship that sank probably in the
Speaker 1: first since chere ce rob. I've got an image for
Speaker 1: you to look at here that shows the actual remains
Speaker 1: of the mechanism alongside a modern reconstruction that was sort
Speaker 1: of reverse engineered and built by some experts who had
Speaker 1: studied this machine. The mechanism is now understood to have
Speaker 1: been an ancient mechanical or ory. An oorory is a
Speaker 1: is a working model of the movement of heavenly bodies,
Speaker 1: and this one would have been powered by a hand
Speaker 1: crank that operated gears. And this or ory would allow
Speaker 1: you to calculate the relative positions of heavenly bodies like
Speaker 1: the Moon and the Sun as they traveled through the
Speaker 1: zodiac out to specific future dates. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: it may it may also have tracked planetary motion as well,
Speaker 1: but that's less certain. I think that's a hypothetical mechanism
Speaker 1: that may have been present but may have been lost.
Speaker 1: When I look at it, I'm instantly reminded of those uh,
Speaker 1: those gear devices you find at museums and zoos where
Speaker 1: you and squash a penny and make it into a
Speaker 1: collector's token, which which I have to say, as as
Speaker 1: a parent, I have I have long realized the children
Speaker 1: are drawn to these like like flies. Uh. To to
Speaker 1: meet they they have to turn the crank. They have
Speaker 1: to watch those gears operate. Um and uh and And
Speaker 1: now that we've actually discussed gears a bit on the show,
Speaker 1: I used to be I was. I've long been very
Speaker 1: annoyed by it, like, oh, come on, don't mess with that.
Speaker 1: We're here to look at something else, and you're just
Speaker 1: gonna turn this gear on this machine that I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you fifty cents and a penny for
Speaker 1: because it's it's a dumb invention. But at the same
Speaker 1: time they're interacting with the gears, they're getting to see
Speaker 1: the gears in motion and see some of that energy
Speaker 1: transference that we're talking about. Oh well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful way. Actually, I think to educate kids
Speaker 1: about mechanical advantage, about like what machines can do. Because
Speaker 1: the kid, they know that they wouldn't have enough strength
Speaker 1: to smash a penny flat with their hands alone, but
Speaker 1: with their hands by operating a rank in a machine
Speaker 1: that has no external power source. It's just the power
Speaker 1: of their arm. But through the mechanical advantage created by
Speaker 1: this crank, the lever of the gears. They can smash
Speaker 1: a penny. That that's kind of that's that's empowering knowledge
Speaker 1: that there's a wizardry to that too. Behold the power
Speaker 1: of the gear. But anyway back to the antikotherum mechanism.
Speaker 1: So it was able to predict the future movements of
Speaker 1: heavenly bodies like the Sun and the moon, and also
Speaker 1: I think predict eclipses. And it managed the different time
Speaker 1: ratios between these these moving objects in the heavens by
Speaker 1: the use of gear ratios, gear ratios to calculate the
Speaker 1: intervals of these movements. So in a way, this was
Speaker 1: a calculator the different ratios between the number of teeth
Speaker 1: on the gears. We're doing math for you now. We
Speaker 1: know in the modern world gears are useful in all
Speaker 1: kinds of machines. You find them everywhere. They're in clocks,
Speaker 1: they're in cars, they're in fluid pumps, they're in mills
Speaker 1: and factory machines. Uh. But but you might wonder, okay, well,
Speaker 1: where did they first appear in the technological space, Because
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily expect to have found a computer for
Speaker 1: astronomical phenomena in the first century ce but here it
Speaker 1: is and probably actually it's even older than that. I
Speaker 1: think it's believed to have been uh. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe at least a hundred years old at the time
Speaker 1: it was lost in the shipwreck, so so clearly that
Speaker 1: that's taking gear math way way back. UH. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to find some good sources on the ancient
Speaker 1: history of gears. I didn't come across anything that was
Speaker 1: super recent, so there may be discoveries since these sources
Speaker 1: I turned up, but um one that was interesting to
Speaker 1: me because it was by Derek John Desola Price, who
Speaker 1: was a British physicist and historian of science who was
Speaker 1: one of the investigators who worked on the Antiko theorem mechanism. UH.
Speaker 1: He did a chapter that was in a book put
Speaker 1: out by the U. S National Museum Bulletin in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine called on the origin of clockwork perpetual motion
Speaker 1: devices in the Compass, and in a short section on
Speaker 1: the earliest known examples of gears and geared mechanisms, he
Speaker 1: writes that the earliest evidence for the knowledge of tooth
Speaker 1: to gears um. Probably it goes back at least as
Speaker 1: far as the Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes, who showed
Speaker 1: clear knowledge of of toothed gears, and he lived in
Speaker 1: the third century BC. But he also cites artifacts from
Speaker 1: ancient China that may indicate knowledge of of gears even
Speaker 1: farther back than that. He writes, quote, in China, actual
Speaker 1: examples of wheels and molds for wheels dating back from
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC have been preserved. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things he mentioned about some of these earliest examples
Speaker 1: of gears in the archaeological record. Uh. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: a remarkable feature in these early gears is the use
Speaker 1: of ratchet shaped teeth, sometimes even twisted heliically so that
Speaker 1: the gears resemble worms into or meshing on parallel axles.
Speaker 1: But then he also calls attention to the fact that
Speaker 1: throughout much of history, uh, you know, definitely before the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, a big use of a lot of a
Speaker 1: major use for gears in the technological space was in mills,
Speaker 1: in windmills and water mills, using large gears as a
Speaker 1: way of transferring force, often at a right angle to
Speaker 1: how these natural forces like the flow of water or
Speaker 1: the flow of wind. We're we're moving the primary turban yeah,
Speaker 1: or likewise to transition from say a horizontal paddle wheel
Speaker 1: into a vertical millstone, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now another paper that you you turned up on. This
Speaker 1: comes to us from M. J. T. Lewis Gearing in
Speaker 1: the Ancient World, published in Endeavor seventy seventeen, number three
Speaker 1: from UM and I was reading through this one. This
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. I'm going to be some slight retreading
Speaker 1: of what we're vary discussed, but basically, according to this
Speaker 1: paper we can trace the technology of of the gear
Speaker 1: to ancient Greeks of the third century b c. Which
Speaker 1: also according to um uh To Fagan at all in
Speaker 1: uh the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know this is this is also the time and
Speaker 1: place where we see, at least according to ancient Greek
Speaker 1: and Latin technical authors, the birth of water powered milling uh,
Speaker 1: a technology that of course would be highly effective. But
Speaker 1: according to to uh To Lewis, here in Alexandria, the
Speaker 1: Greek kings of Egypt at the time the Ptolemy's, they
Speaker 1: set up a research center called the Museum. I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about the Museum in the past, right, perhaps
Speaker 1: even in our episode the invention of the museum about
Speaker 1: the sort of the original usage of this word that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, Yeah, yeah, So basically, various technological innovations were
Speaker 1: said to have emerged from this this sort of lab
Speaker 1: this kind of technological think tank and laboratory. Uh and,
Speaker 1: according to such writers as hero Vitruvius and Phillow of Byzantium,
Speaker 1: they all point to the work of Descibius, who would
Speaker 1: have lived to five through two twenty two b c E.
Speaker 1: None of his actual writings survived, but he's said to
Speaker 1: have written various works on compressed air and hydraulics, and
Speaker 1: hero Vitrucius and Philo would all go on to write
Speaker 1: at length on these various machines and uh and and devices,
Speaker 1: various gear arrangements. Other great minds of that age and region,
Speaker 1: such as Archimedes, would also expand on these ideas as well. Now,
Speaker 1: Lewis explains that we ultimately don't know where and when
Speaker 1: the earliest gears pop up in human history UH tooth gears,
Speaker 1: he writes, already existed in the form of ratchet wheels
Speaker 1: that were used to hold a windlass against a load,
Speaker 1: and these might date back to Greek crane innovations from
Speaker 1: around five b c. E um. He He also points
Speaker 1: that a bronze example of this has been found from
Speaker 1: about a century later, and this might have been used
Speaker 1: for hauling ships up a slipway. After this point, ratchets
Speaker 1: were widely used on catapults as a way of holding
Speaker 1: back all that potential firing energy. Um. But he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: but the first toothed wheel for transmitting motion may have
Speaker 1: been a sprocket wheel driving a chain. This is attested
Speaker 1: by two machines described by Philo. One is a chain
Speaker 1: of buckets powered by a water wheel. The other is
Speaker 1: a repeater catapult built in roads by certain Dionysius of Alexandria,
Speaker 1: who cannot be precisely identified, but may have well worked
Speaker 1: before two eighty two b c. E. So the Greeks
Speaker 1: and the Romans obviously applied the subsequent technology to a
Speaker 1: number of tasks. But but Lewis raises the question did
Speaker 1: they invent all of this themselves or did they borrow
Speaker 1: or pick up on the ideas of others, And he
Speaker 1: writes that one possibility would be the they somehow got
Speaker 1: these ideas from China. In fact, he writes this would
Speaker 1: be seemingly the only other alternative. UM. However, one of
Speaker 1: the limiting factors here is that accounts of the gear
Speaker 1: in China largely come later, from the first century CE,
Speaker 1: but he writes, quote the only earlier examples in China
Speaker 1: so far recorded, and I do want to stress this
Speaker 1: was like UM are a number of very small bronze
Speaker 1: gears and ratchets found in tombs and dating from around
Speaker 1: two b c E to fifty C. They include extraordinarily
Speaker 1: what looked like chevron or double helical gear wheels of
Speaker 1: tiny size. All seemed too small and too early to
Speaker 1: belong as has been suggested to windlasses for drawing crossbows,
Speaker 1: and we have no idea what they were for gear mystery.
Speaker 1: And I include of uh images of these uh, these
Speaker 1: mysterious gears below. So yeah, I haven't haven't had a
Speaker 1: lot of time to investigate further to see if any
Speaker 1: additional scholarship has emerged on these little gears and what
Speaker 1: they might have been used for UM. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if if ultimately there are stronger arguments that have
Speaker 1: been put put forth regarding their use or possible use
Speaker 1: and crossbow technology. But it's fascinating Oh, one of these
Speaker 1: pictures you attached. I wonder if this is what Derek J.
Speaker 1: To sell a Price was referring to when talking about
Speaker 1: ratchet shaped teeth that are twisted helickally so that they
Speaker 1: look like worms intermeshing on parallel axles. That I can
Speaker 1: see at least one of the images you include from
Speaker 1: the Chinese example could could be what he's talking about there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where my mind went when you read that that debt.
Speaker 1: Having having looked at these examples, Yeah, it has kind
Speaker 1: of a worm like quality to it. Um. Now, Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Lewis and his writing, he contends that gearing was either
Speaker 1: invented independently in China and in the Greek world, or
Speaker 1: that it was actually transmitted from the West to the
Speaker 1: East rather than vice versa. But but, but, like I said, that,
Speaker 1: there may be additional scholarship that we just haven't come
Speaker 1: across yet regarding this. But it does raise the question
Speaker 1: what kind of gears would one be entombed with? You know, what,
Speaker 1: what bit of technology would it make sense to to
Speaker 1: to go to the grave with. I mean, certainly a
Speaker 1: very nice crossbow seems like the sort of thing you
Speaker 1: might bring with you. Um, I don't know if it
Speaker 1: would make sense for there to be some sort of
Speaker 1: like purely novelty gear device, like something that was more
Speaker 1: of a curio that maybe wasn't fully utilized or you know,
Speaker 1: analog computer. Yeah, it could be. I guess if your
Speaker 1: journey in the afterlife really depends on knowing when an
Speaker 1: eclipse is coming, yeah, I wonder yeah, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: of course, but then of course, just interlocking gears and
Speaker 1: turning things are just are interesting. They they they make
Speaker 1: us think about about motion and uh, interlocking energy. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems like they're there's just a
Speaker 1: few different directs it could go in that I could
Speaker 1: I could imagine somebody saying, uh, that is something I
Speaker 1: want to be buried than now. I want to come
Speaker 1: back to the concept of gears in biology because for
Speaker 1: a long time, while there was probably no known example
Speaker 1: of a working gear in the in the biological world,
Speaker 1: there have been observations before of animals having appendages certainly
Speaker 1: look like tooth to gears. And my favorite, uh instance
Speaker 1: I came across here is a creature called the wheel
Speaker 1: bug or eralists cristatas. This is a type of predatory
Speaker 1: assassin bug that preys on all kinds of insects, including aphids, caterpillars, beetles,
Speaker 1: and bees. I found some very gnarly looking images of
Speaker 1: of caterpillar mutilation. Yeah, I don't think i'd really seen
Speaker 1: this species before, these creatures before, but yeah, they're quite
Speaker 1: cool looking. It kind of looks like it has some
Speaker 1: sort of a gear emerging from its back. Also, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of a buzz saw or perhaps to some
Speaker 1: degree of something like a stegasaurus or or or demetrodon
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, so it's called the wheel bug, but
Speaker 1: I think maybe a better name would be the gear bug,
Speaker 1: because it really does look like it's it's got this
Speaker 1: toothed gear poking up out of the back of its carapace,
Speaker 1: right sort of behind where the head is up on
Speaker 1: the thorax. And so I was reading about this insect
Speaker 1: on the University of Florida Department of Intropology's website. They've
Speaker 1: got a good profile on it there and they say
Speaker 1: in adulthood, this insect tends to measure about one to
Speaker 1: one and a quarter inches long, and then quote, this
Speaker 1: assassin bug is a dark, robust creature with long legs
Speaker 1: and antennae, a stout beak, large eyes on a slim head,
Speaker 1: and a prominent thoracic semicircular crep ust that resembles a
Speaker 1: cog wheel or a chicken's comb. This is the only
Speaker 1: insects species in the United States with such a crest.
Speaker 1: The number of teeth or tubercles in the crest varies
Speaker 1: from eight to twelve. Now immediately you're you're probably wondering,
Speaker 1: as I was, what does it do? What? What is
Speaker 1: the gear on its back? Do? I could not find
Speaker 1: any solid research alluding to a purpose of this cog
Speaker 1: wheel crest. That there may be something out there that
Speaker 1: I couldn't come across, or it may just be unknown.
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely unknown at this point what
Speaker 1: this gear crest is for, in which case, barring other knowledge,
Speaker 1: I guess you might assume that its purpose might have
Speaker 1: something to do with appearance rather than any mechanical function.
Speaker 1: Maybe it plays a visual role in interactions with predators
Speaker 1: or prey or mats, or maybe it's defensive somehow. It's
Speaker 1: hard to tell um but apparently Another interesting fact is
Speaker 1: that the wheel is absent in juvenile So if you
Speaker 1: look at nymphs of this assassin bug, they don't have it.
Speaker 1: It only appears in adults after the insects final molting,
Speaker 1: so once it reaches its ultimate form, then it's got
Speaker 1: the gear. But whatever it's for, it does not appear
Speaker 1: to be a functional gear. It just looks like one.
Speaker 1: I mean, for one thing, it can't rotate, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing really that it could clearly be rotating against locking
Speaker 1: its teeth with. It's just a crest that kind of
Speaker 1: looks like a gear or like a like a chicken's comb. Now,
Speaker 1: as amazing as these insects look, one thing I should
Speaker 1: probably note is that you don't want to try to
Speaker 1: handle it, because apparently wheelbugs can produce an extremely painful
Speaker 1: bite that that lingers for days. But but anyway, this
Speaker 1: animal is worth looking up. There are actually a few
Speaker 1: other interesting things about them. For one thing, they do
Speaker 1: appear to practice some amount of sexual cannibalism. Also, they
Speaker 1: there is another mystery about them where they produce a vocalization.
Speaker 1: I think they create a chirping sound by a certain
Speaker 1: type of a friction mechanism where they rub one part
Speaker 1: of their body on another. I think maybe they're rubbing
Speaker 1: some uh, they're either their beak or four legs. I
Speaker 1: think it was the beak on an on a part
Speaker 1: on the underside of their carapacet and it creates this chirping.
Speaker 1: And scientists, as far as I could tell, don't know
Speaker 1: what this is for yet. But coming back to the
Speaker 1: idea of an actual mechanically functional gear in biology, as
Speaker 1: of a study published in the year in the journal Science,
Speaker 1: there actually is at least one known animal that does
Speaker 1: contain working toothed gears within its body, and as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, this is also still the only
Speaker 1: animal that has this feature that that's known, and this
Speaker 1: animal is a type of plant hopper insect known as S. S.
Speaker 1: Colliup tratis. The paper that reported the discovery of this
Speaker 1: animal gear was, like I said, published in Science in
Speaker 1: by authors Malcolm Burrows and Gregory Sutton, who both at
Speaker 1: the time worked in the biological sciences at Cambridge University,
Speaker 1: and it was called interacting gears synchronized propulsive leg movements
Speaker 1: in a jumping insect. Now, Rob, I've got some images
Speaker 1: that you can that you can look at here while
Speaker 1: I'm talking about this. There's some really interesting electron micrographs
Speaker 1: of of these these gear pieces. They truly don't really
Speaker 1: look animal, right, you know, they do look like a machine.
Speaker 1: And I always love that when you like zoom way
Speaker 1: in on the parts of an insect or something and
Speaker 1: you get that hr Geeger space where you can't tell
Speaker 1: if what you're looking at is is natural or artificial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's one image here of believe a nymph um
Speaker 1: of of this uh, of this species, and you know
Speaker 1: it's it's cute, but it doesn't really look like anything
Speaker 1: other than some sort of a fly or insect um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, when you start looking at these these electron
Speaker 1: microscope images, yeah, then then it takes on this bio
Speaker 1: mechanical kind of reality and it's, uh, yeah, it's quite
Speaker 1: unlike anything else I've seen. So it is this animal,
Speaker 1: the the S. S. Coleopterus. Well, this is an insect
Speaker 1: that is again known as a plant hopper. I think
Speaker 1: you'll normally find them crawling around on bits of ivy
Speaker 1: in Europe and North Africa, and so they're they're very
Speaker 1: very small. They're usually just about three millimeters long at
Speaker 1: maturity um and so they'll go around grazing on ivy leaves.
Speaker 1: And the discovery that's announced in this report is that
Speaker 1: the juveniles of this species, so not the adults, but
Speaker 1: the nymphs. The juveniles, they have these interlocking gear teeth
Speaker 1: on their back legs which allow them to rotate their
Speaker 1: legs in perfect synchronization when they are setting up a jump.
Speaker 1: So these tiny insects have have their main defense against predators.
Speaker 1: And it's not clear exactly what predator this is most
Speaker 1: adapted against, so I don't know if this would be,
Speaker 1: you know, against the possibility of being eaten by a
Speaker 1: large mammal that's grazing on foliage, or being pounced on
Speaker 1: by a parasitic wasp or some other kind of smaller
Speaker 1: insect predator or spider or something that's not quite known
Speaker 1: for sure, but but there it is probably some kind
Speaker 1: of survival defensive adaptation that this creature needs to be
Speaker 1: able to jump far and jump fast, and they are
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing jumpers in all of nature.
Speaker 1: I was watching an interview with one of the authors
Speaker 1: of the study, Malcolm Burrows, in which he talks about
Speaker 1: the jumping mechanism, and so the s s insect will
Speaker 1: take off at a at a jump of about five
Speaker 1: meters per second or more than eight miles per hour,
Speaker 1: which for a tiny insect like this is pretty fast.
Speaker 1: It accelerates to its jumping speed in less than a millisecond.
Speaker 1: And so the way Burrows explain this is that this
Speaker 1: insect experiences absolutely unfathomable G forces as it takes off
Speaker 1: because its acceleration is so fast. He puts it at
Speaker 1: five hundred or even seven hundred g's, which if you
Speaker 1: look at the amount of g's that humans are able
Speaker 1: to tolerate, it's like the amount you can tolerate is
Speaker 1: a factor of how long you are subjected to them.
Speaker 1: But you know, usually for humans, the the the acceleration
Speaker 1: we can tolerate in gs, the maximum is like a
Speaker 1: factor of a few tens, you know, but this would
Speaker 1: be hundreds. Yeah, this is impressive. So this insect has
Speaker 1: this amazingly fast, amazingly powerful jump that can just catapult
Speaker 1: It's like it's shooting itself out of a cannon using
Speaker 1: the power of its two hind legs. And what was
Speaker 1: documented in this paper by by Burrows and Sutton is
Speaker 1: that they they captured imagery of gear mechanisms on the
Speaker 1: hind legs interlocking using electron microscopy and high speed video recording. Uh,
Speaker 1: and and again, the purpose that they found is that
Speaker 1: these interlocking gear teeth are useful for synchronizing the motion
Speaker 1: of the legs. Now, why would synchronization of the leg
Speaker 1: movement be so important that it would have its own
Speaker 1: evolved mechanism, which is, as far as we know, unique
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom. Well, apparently it's because coordination of
Speaker 1: the timing on the two legs is necessary for this
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful sort of cannon shot jump to be effective.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about this in one of the
Speaker 1: press releases about the about the study, and what the
Speaker 1: author's here found is that a lack of synchronization between
Speaker 1: the legs at launch could cause an uncontrolled what they
Speaker 1: call yaw rotation. So if you if you picture an airplane,
Speaker 1: you know you've got the different uh, the different ways
Speaker 1: that you can change the motion of the airplane. You've
Speaker 1: got pitch, role and yaw. So pitch would be tipping
Speaker 1: the nose of the airplane up or down. Role would
Speaker 1: be raising. That would be rolling the airplane. You know,
Speaker 1: ray s the wings relative to each other, and then
Speaker 1: yaw is twisting side to side. If you can imagine
Speaker 1: an insect, that's sort of catapulting itself in this spectacular
Speaker 1: jump with two with pushing off with the two hind
Speaker 1: legs at the same time. If one leg pushes off
Speaker 1: faster than the other one, you can imagine that it's
Speaker 1: going to send the insects sort of twisting out of
Speaker 1: control in its path, which obviously interferes with landing where
Speaker 1: it's trying to land. Now, one question would be why
Speaker 1: the need for a mechanical gear for synchronization. What why
Speaker 1: does this need to be on the insects exoskeleton. Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't the insect just synchronize the action of its legs
Speaker 1: through the nervous system like pretty much any other animal would, Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you are jumping, you are able to synchronize the
Speaker 1: motion of your legs through neural mechanisms with your brain
Speaker 1: and your nervous system sort of trying to control them
Speaker 1: through normal motor function, and then getting feedback from the
Speaker 1: feelings of your legs from like your appropriate reception and
Speaker 1: stuff and and tactle sensations to to try to time
Speaker 1: the jump together and correct for any imbalances in real time. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently the insect can't do that because the problem is
Speaker 1: it's jump is too fast to synchronize through the nervous system.
Speaker 1: The acceleration leading into the jump happens so quickly that
Speaker 1: the nervous system cannot do real time feedback to coordinate it,
Speaker 1: so it needs this mechanical lock on the legs themselves
Speaker 1: to make sure synchronization is happening, because the insects nervous
Speaker 1: system can't talk to itself fast enough to make sure
Speaker 1: that the that the jump is on target. In their
Speaker 1: In their press release, author Malcolm Burrows summarized it like
Speaker 1: this quote. The precise synchronization would be impossible to achieve
Speaker 1: through a nervous system, as neural impulses would take far
Speaker 1: too long for the extraordinarily tight coordination required by developing
Speaker 1: mechanical gears, the can just in nerve signals to its
Speaker 1: muscles to produce roughly the same amount of force. Then,
Speaker 1: if one leg starts to propel the jump, the gears
Speaker 1: will interlock, creating absolute synchronicity and is the skeleton is
Speaker 1: used to solve a complex problem that the brain and
Speaker 1: nervous system can't. This emphasizes the importance of considering the
Speaker 1: properties of the skeleton in how movement is produced, and
Speaker 1: this was really interesting to me because it also comes
Speaker 1: back to you could maybe even consider this a case
Speaker 1: of sort of supplementing the cognitive abilities of the nervous system,
Speaker 1: sort of embodied cognition, allowing the body to do math
Speaker 1: for you that your brain and nervous system can't handle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because essentially it's it's it's a physical way of solving
Speaker 1: a problem that is beyond cognitive ability, um and and
Speaker 1: and and really when we're talking about the g forces
Speaker 1: pulled here, and I think this is beyond spaceflight. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about like humans have not evolved to
Speaker 1: travel in space or to deal with certain speeds or
Speaker 1: or physical realities like, this is a case here where
Speaker 1: this this creature is is essentially engaging in those kinds
Speaker 1: of speeds, those kinds of rapid accelerations. Uh So it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about here. Yeah, the body moves
Speaker 1: too fast for the nervous system to make sense of,
Speaker 1: so it just offloads that that computation that the motor
Speaker 1: parts of the nervous system might do naturally, offloads that
Speaker 1: onto the skeleton. Now, the exoskeleton of the insect is
Speaker 1: doing the math for you, kind of like an analog
Speaker 1: computer would like the antique theorem mechanism wow wow. So
Speaker 1: to take a slightly closer look at these teeth at
Speaker 1: the gears on the hind legs. They're located on the
Speaker 1: backs of the strong hind legs that the s s
Speaker 1: insect uses to jump um there on the parts of
Speaker 1: the legs known as the trocanta, and it's actually a
Speaker 1: human skeleton has trocanta to their They're sort of on
Speaker 1: the upper part of the femur, near where the femur
Speaker 1: would would connect to the pelvis. And these these insects
Speaker 1: tend to have somewhere between ten to twelve teeth on
Speaker 1: their gears. But while it seems to vary between the insects,
Speaker 1: the insect always has the same amount of teeth on
Speaker 1: each side. Within itself, each tooth is about eighty micrometers wide,
Speaker 1: so eighty millionths of a meter. And there are some
Speaker 1: interesting engineered features of of these gear teeth within the
Speaker 1: body that have been created by the evolutionary process that
Speaker 1: gives rise to them. Here, the teeth have rounded corners
Speaker 1: at the point of contact, and this is useful, apparently
Speaker 1: because it would help prevent the gears from being sheared
Speaker 1: off or broken off if there is a slight misalignment
Speaker 1: during a jump. And then another interesting thing about them
Speaker 1: is that they are differently shaped than most gears we
Speaker 1: use in the technological world, because usually gears made by
Speaker 1: humans tend to have some metrical teeth, right, you know,
Speaker 1: there's sort of curved straight out from the gear strip surface,
Speaker 1: But in these the teeth are not quite symmetrical. They're
Speaker 1: sort of angled out. And it's because this gear only
Speaker 1: needs to work one way, so like, after the launch
Speaker 1: is done, the gear teeth can just separate from each
Speaker 1: other and they don't need to roll backwards in in
Speaker 1: the direction opposite from which they came. It's a one
Speaker 1: way gear. Yeah, and you definitely get that from looking
Speaker 1: at the image. It feels like some sort of a
Speaker 1: biomechanical um, you know, firing mechanism, right, A firing mechanism
Speaker 1: is a is a good way to compare it, because again,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go both ways and it doesn't need to
Speaker 1: roll all the way around. It's just sort of a
Speaker 1: strip of interlocking teeth that doesn't complete a full circle.
Speaker 1: And it only and it only rolls one way only
Speaker 1: on launch. Yeah, like it kind of looks like if
Speaker 1: hr gear designed a flint lock. Yeah, or maybe if
Speaker 1: David Cronenberg did you know? Yeah? Oh, but so there
Speaker 1: was a really interesting thing about this research, the question
Speaker 1: of how did they figure out that these gear teeth
Speaker 1: locked for synchronization while launching the jump? Right? Like, how
Speaker 1: do how did they observe that? Well, apparently the authors
Speaker 1: here used a dead insect. They used an insect corpse,
Speaker 1: and what they did was they they took the dead
Speaker 1: insects legs and rotated them back into the jump launching position,
Speaker 1: and then the researchers used an electrical stimulus to cause
Speaker 1: a contraction in the jumping muscle of only one of
Speaker 1: the legs. Okay, so they they stimulate only one leg
Speaker 1: as if it has been told by the brain to jump.
Speaker 1: But because the gear teeth were locked when the legs
Speaker 1: were in jump readying position, the insects legs both performed
Speaker 1: the launching motion, even the dead leg on the other
Speaker 1: side that had not been electrically stimulated, and the insect
Speaker 1: leapt straightforward, so you could stimulate only one of the
Speaker 1: two legs, kind of like how an airplane can fly
Speaker 1: with only one engine. You know, you only need to
Speaker 1: stimulate one of the legs, and the gears keep both
Speaker 1: legs locked in sync. Now there's another interesting question here,
Speaker 1: why only the juveniles. I think I already mentioned that
Speaker 1: the adult insects don't have these interlocking gear teeth. They've
Speaker 1: got a feature that's more common, more like what you'd
Speaker 1: see in a lot of other jumping insects, which is
Speaker 1: not gear teeth, but just sort of um bumps or
Speaker 1: friction pads, So their back legs might touch each other
Speaker 1: and and the touching their helps keep the jump synchronized.
Speaker 1: But they don't actually have interlocking teeth. It's more just
Speaker 1: kind of like pushing to surfaces together that grip each
Speaker 1: other pretty well. In another study by Burrows, he noted
Speaker 1: that this is achieved by quote mechanical actions between small
Speaker 1: protrusions from each Trochantera, which fluoresce bright blue under specific
Speaker 1: wavelengths of ultraviolet light and which touch at the midline
Speaker 1: when the legs are cocked before a jump. So the
Speaker 1: adults are touching parts of their back legs together to
Speaker 1: help synchronize a jump, but they don't have gear teeth.
Speaker 1: And the hypothesized explanation for the difference here is that
Speaker 1: is this Insects go through periods of molting as they grow. Right,
Speaker 1: So an insect, as it gets bigger and bigger, it
Speaker 1: will shed its old hard exoskeleton and then it will
Speaker 1: grow bigger and allow a new exoskeleton to harden. But
Speaker 1: the adult exoskeleton at full maturity, it lacks these interlocking
Speaker 1: gear teeth. And the idea is maybe the adults don't
Speaker 1: have the teeth because if the teeth on the jumping
Speaker 1: mechanism were to break or get sheared off but by error,
Speaker 1: this would sort of break their ability to jump. And
Speaker 1: so once the adult is in full molted form and
Speaker 1: it's not going to shed its exoskeleton again, it needs
Speaker 1: to have a less fragile mechanism. But the younger's, the
Speaker 1: younger ones, the juveniles, because they will go through multiple
Speaker 1: moltings and can grow new gear teeth if they're old
Speaker 1: gear teeth break, they pay less of a price for
Speaker 1: having this somewhat fragile mechanism. Okay, So here we see
Speaker 1: sort of in in their early stages, the advantages of
Speaker 1: having an an exo skeleton, and then in in later
Speaker 1: life the disadvantages of having an exoskeleton and that you're
Speaker 1: not going to get another one, right, And so when
Speaker 1: you're not going to get another one, it makes more
Speaker 1: sense for evolution to supply you with more durable mechanisms
Speaker 1: that aren't going to possibly like kill you if if
Speaker 1: they break right, there would be a survival advantage in
Speaker 1: having a jumping mechanism that's not going to It's not
Speaker 1: going to be like a Boba Fett's um jet pack
Speaker 1: firing off at a weird angle and sending you into
Speaker 1: the sarlac. Right, But that's just a hypothesized explanation for
Speaker 1: the difference between the juveniles and adults. Ultimately, we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure there and as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: this is still the only known toothed gear in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom. That there may have been something since then
Speaker 1: that I wasn't able to track down, but it looks
Speaker 1: like this is still the only one. Yeah, well, this
Speaker 1: is fascinating. It kind of brings me back to the
Speaker 1: biobmetics question earlier. You know, um an evolution solving particular
Speaker 1: engineering problems over time, and this is an example where
Speaker 1: the the engineering problem is extreme enough that and the
Speaker 1: and the circumstances of its its lifespan enable the sort
Speaker 1: of answer to evolve and take place. Yeah. Yeah. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine if you had gear teeth on your inner
Speaker 1: thighs that helps you jump, it seems uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd have to have an exoskeleton too for this place.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I'd have to have some other kind of
Speaker 1: weird arrangement, like you would have to be bone spurs
Speaker 1: or keith that grow back, I guess, because that would
Speaker 1: again you'd have to have the situation of what what
Speaker 1: do you do about the wear and tear of this
Speaker 1: the physical mechanics here, I mean, it doesn't really make
Speaker 1: sense for our bodies because that wouldn't that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: how we jump anyway, or like I need to work
Speaker 1: differently for that to make sense. Yeah. Yeah, So again
Speaker 1: we come down to a very specific, evolved answer to
Speaker 1: a specific problem that yeah, you're just not going to
Speaker 1: see in in in other organisms. But I am still
Speaker 1: in memorative the idea that in a way, these these
Speaker 1: gear teeth on the insects legs are a kind of computer.
Speaker 1: They're doing a kind of mathematical processing for the animal.
Speaker 1: This is the this is the computer of the thighs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also it's interesting too that no matter how
Speaker 1: no matter how much you know, humanity clung to the
Speaker 1: wheel and to gears and and saw this as their
Speaker 1: technological achievement. Uh. Here we have an example of evolution
Speaker 1: once more, beating humanity to the punch. Uh. So well,
Speaker 1: before the Greeks of Alexandria were devising their uh their gear,
Speaker 1: you know complexities. Uh, this creature already had the gears
Speaker 1: right there in its thighs. These gears are hopping. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: this was fun. I enjoyed talking about everything from We
Speaker 1: had a little bit of an intervention episode. Uh in here,
Speaker 1: we had some biology, we had a little bit of
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore. So it would be interesting to come
Speaker 1: back to this. And and we talked about potentially covering
Speaker 1: screws and screws in nature in this episode, but perhaps
Speaker 1: that would make for its own future episode. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there are actually a few things in nature that you
Speaker 1: could argue or screws. Yeah, and then and and of
Speaker 1: course the invention of the screw and uh and so
Speaker 1: forth is also quite interesting. All right, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close it up then, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. UM, certainly reach out to us,
Speaker 1: get in touch with us in the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind Core episodes publishing the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sandwich between them,
Speaker 1: we have an Artifact episode or for the months of
Speaker 1: September and October. Anyway, it's going to be the Monster Fact.
Speaker 1: It's gonna We're gonna take on more of a monstrous
Speaker 1: form for the holidays here and then it will likely
Speaker 1: revert back to the Artifact. We have listener mail on Monday's.
Speaker 1: We have a little weird house cinema on Fridays. That's
Speaker 1: our I'm just to discuss a weird film, and then
Speaker 1: we have a rerun over the weekend. Huge things. As
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast. Stuff
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