Nature creates round objects all the time (stones in a river, a hedgehog in a ball,…), but the principle of an axle is not found as far as I know.

  • alpine_jim@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    How about this insect with a pair toothed gears? Not an axle, but still amazing!

    “The juvenile Issus - a plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe - has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump.”

    • Aniki@feddit.org
      7·
      1 day ago

      it’s gears, alright, but i don’t think that it can rotate by more than 360°?

      • alpine_jim@piefed.socialEnglish
        41·
        1 day ago

        No, that’s what I meant by not an axle.

        But, come to think of it, we can swing our arms round and round, more than 360°.

        • Kevin@programming.dev
          1·
          1 day ago

          I would argue that’s more due to the up-down and front-back limited rotations combining to form a circular mode, kinda like a Cartesian to Polar coordinate mapping

          • alpine_jim@piefed.socialEnglish
            41·
            23 hours ago

            that’s reasonable.

            bonus fun fact - the etymology is connected - “axle” comes from older words for “shoulder”, or “armpit”, which survives in some regional Englishes as “oxter” - the connection is apparently that you’d carry a person by putting their arms up and linking at the shoulders, much like an axle is how wheels carry a cart.

            https://www.etymonline.com/word/axle