Mechanical gears in jumping insects 

This is freaking sweet! I wonder what a mechanical engineer would think if they studied the shape of these gears. Perhaps they would discover that the shape is highly optimized. That would make this discovery even more amazing!

Professor Burrows should be commended for fostering the next generation of biologists. It sounds to me like his grandson may have a bright future in the field.

strange combination of subjects - but living gears is surely appropriately surreal

I'm loving this mix of art, science, sound, community engagement. More please

How can you say that these cogwheel gears evolved with a straight face?

Intelligent design.

SERIOUSLY?! They EVOLVED?! I don't know about other people, but when I see GEARS I know there's INTELLIGENT DESIGN behind them! Wow... unreal.

That gear interlocking is there for a purpose, maybe because its the best solution to avoid dismembrance or dislocation as extremely powerful jumping force is applied.

does the bug use wd-40 when it accidental grind it's gear?

Um... The video strayed away from cogs with a quickness

Waited till the end, what a wonderful project.

"Rays Geezers" and "Sharp End" - this is marvelous!

Something I find interesting is that the gear teeth in the insect are all identical. We make most gears like that because it is simply easier to manufacture such a gear and ensure it works with other gears. I wonder why though it is the same for the insect? Those gears will never be replaced, no new ones will ever be made, so why are all the teeth the same size? I see no inherent advantage for that being the case. As long as they mesh together, the teeth could be all sorts of shapes and sizes. Anybody have some insight here?

Did you listen to what this man claimed? He said, "But what we've shown is that a small plant-sucking bug evolved gears long, long ago..." The problem with this quote is that he makes an unverified assumption. He did not "show" that the bug evolved anything. All he showed was that a bug has gears on its legs.

Gregory Sutton said: "These gears are not designed; they are evolved..." Well, since every structure in living organism is represented by information comprised of four building blocks: C, G, T, A.., all that scientists have to do is to demonstrate how temporal and structural synchronization, and component intradependence of this "precision machinery" is achieved by randomly changing the order of CGTA building blocks in information(genes) that represent a different structure.

Evolved, you say?

You got to love the little things.

This grinds my gears.

I had a good laugh at the fishing hook at 2:58

I am sad I missed this back in 2013. Excellent animations from the children. Exciting stuff for them I am sure. Re the gear wheels -- Brilliant! The results of evolution never cease to amaze me. Way back in the 80's one of my university practicals was to learn how to use an electron microscope. We looked at T-even bacteriophages which are relatively complicated as viruses go. They have "hypodermic needles" to inject their DNA (not an RNA phage) into the bacteria. To push the needle in, they have "legs" to grab the bacteria and a helical spring. It was the spring that amazed me. Just like a human designed and manufactured coiled spring. I remember having to conceal my tears of excitement. These gear wheels beat my spring hands down for amazement though!

This is incredible! Excellent filming.

This video is approaching 10 years old now, are there any other similar discoveries? What has this discovery lead to, if anything?

The issus insect is just amazing!

...and still he uses the term "evolve" ... this is intelligent design, sir.

i wonder how if it slip one step or two ? who tune it back ?

Nature did it first again.

He said "EVOLVED", Cause you know nature is so intelligent but completely unaware of itself and yet can create life that is aware of itself. Forget the idea that there is a God.

Well the first part was interesting but what the hell happened after that?

ID is conclusion based on deductive reasoning. P1: bio-structures and proceses have significance in one another (sperm-egg, RNA splicing-protein production, Interphase-Prophase...) P2: bio-structure is arrangement of matter P3: natural processes don't create significance of one arrangement of matter in another arrangement of matter P4: ID creates significance of one arrangement of matter in another arrangement of matter(machine components for example) C: bio-structures are created by ID.

And everyone here still believes this all auto-generated. *insert unamused emoji*

how does it survive the g force?

SO that's what kind of bugs they are...rotary engines in bacterial flagellum, gears in insect legs,... intelligent design at work.

How do GEARS "evolve" in an insect? It seems to me that you either have gears or you don't have gears.

It is a bit annoying to see children's drawings when I am just here to learn about those gears.

I knew to expect that evolution would be the assumed explanation for this incredible example of precision engineering. To suggest that random mutations produced these gears is insane. How did that happen? Are we to expect that a plant hopper was born in the past with a full pair of interlocking gears that neither of its parents had? No of course not, we can all agree that would be too far fetched even for committed evolutionists. So we are left with the notion that a plant hopper was born with a single and useless cog. It must have retained that useless cog that offered no advantage for natural selection until it miraculously and randomly mutated the full set, cog by cog some millions of years later. Is this not ridiculous? Can anyone suggest a better explanation? For the record, no I'm not religious.

looks like a flea, which also jump at high velocity.

Amazing.

Amazing. Science rocks!

excellent stuff!!

There are people who believe Earth is only 6000 years old. Jesus.

Amazing!!!!

"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me"

If this is true, which one is the driving leg, and which one is the driven leg?

This bug is manually elite

Thank you ifunny

What's the piece that accompanies the animation?

Can it only walk in a straight line or does it have a diff-lock for jumping?

i can"t believe it

Obvious design in the creation is why we Christians believe in a Designer - God.

Beautiful

Name of the song towards the end of the video?

look just like curved rack gears like in clocks mechanisms.

So basically it's a locked differencial

We live in the era of dead matter, the day that living cells form part of our materials, we will evolve!

So which gear evolved first? This is an irreducibility complex machine - genetic mutations don’t build complex machines.

What does art has to do with mechanical gears in insects? Can't you keep to the relevant, Prof? Otherwise, it will make the title of this video misleading.

Its all Design "

trevenman "ID is pseudoscience, it does not explain anything." Explaining something doesn't make it science and even if things are "explained" in scientific terms, that doesn't guarantee the explanation to be correct. If we were to tally all of the scientific explanations made in history, the vast majority would be incorrect. Even explanations that achieve "law" status sometimes end up being discarded. Example: "The theory of recapitulation, also called THE BIOGENETIC LAW or embryological parallelism- often expressed in Ernst Haeckel's phrase as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"-is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors." - Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

what was the insect at 2:53

Whats that music playing?

Mechanically interacting gears where thought as a man made invention but a bug that doesn't live very long "evolved" and made one in it's own body? Waiting for my Nokia phone to evolve into a Samsung Note 20.

Everything is made of gears if you have a big enough microscope or imagination...muscle fibers...proteins (DNA is like a worm screw) .atoms...electrons...to the mandelbrot taurus fields holding everything together.

Bravo! Well done! This is another example of Mother Nature showing mankind the way. The implications are infinite. What else is out there waiting to be discovered. I can think of only one other natural occurrence more amazing than this one, the Fibonacci Sequence, found in just about everything in the natural world. But gears? Wow is all I can say. Cheers!

I don't consider it as a full gear. A human can also make this by streching his fingers and place his left and right hand towards eachother and lock into place and turn. Though it serves no purpose in nature.

That's definitely going to be ignored by the ID folks.

Evolved....

He just "matter of factly" states that the bugs "evolved gears". Of course the didn't "evolve gears." One thing is eternal and it isn't matter, it is God. I don't know what it's like on the outside of this physical dimension, but that spiritual dimension is not confined to the physics we know. Physical laws are for a physical universe. When you get to the bottom of it, all matter is light. God could turn this all on like flipping a switch. Ge 1:3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. It is tragically funny how scientists will talk about other dimensions, but they will never acknowledge God. God told us there was another dimension. He called it heaven. This dimension was created out of that dimension. Everything here was made after the pattern of things in heaven. This is a physical model of that spiritual dimension. And yet they will never go there. They will postulate about other dimensions and multi-verses but they will never say God. Their bias is so obvious that it screams. Concerning the origin of life, If dead matter once spontaneously quickened, why isn't inanimate matter still self animating? Life is supernatural.

Did I just see a bag of ready salted crisps?

natures nuts

WTH.. as if gears in insects isn't weird enough, have some kids' drawings with music play over the very scientific video footage. 02:37

NO way to demonstrate a prototype-gear; so loyal to Darwin - they become so blinkered

almost like they were ....created

9 year-olds in China are studying Algebra 8 hours a day :(

You can be scientist and stupid in the same time 🤷 I call them ignorant scientists

EVOLUTION made this !!?? How blind these people are

Amazing!