Biological mechanical gear discovered as key to extreme jump speeds in insect

[[Seed Eater]]

[quote]With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage—their strange, shark-fin teeth interlocking cleanly like a zipper. And then, faster than you can blink, think, or see with the naked eye, the entire thing is gone. In 2 milliseconds it has bulleted skyward, accelerating at nearly 400 g's—a rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand. At top speed the jumper breaks 8 mph—quite a feat considering its body is less than one-tenth of an inch long.

This miniature marvel is an adolescent issus, a kind of planthopper insect and one of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom. As a duo of researchers in the U.K. report today in the journal Science, the issus also the first living creature ever discovered to sport a functioning gear. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do," says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations."[/quote]

[url=http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/the-first-gear-discovered-in-nature-15916433?click=pm_latest]Source[/url]

[t]http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/ba/Issus-02-0913-de.jpg[/t]
[img]http://cdn.makeagif.com/media/9-12-2013/6Mexj9.gif[/img]
[img]http://cdn.makeagif.com/media/9-12-2013/ycI1mA.gif[/img]

[highlight](User was banned for this post ("search before you post" - Orkel))[/highlight]

[Cheif]

Just read about this on my Flipboard. That's pretty fucking awesome if you ask me!

[PN_Redux]

Someone made a thread about this yesterday
[URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1306997"]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1306997[/URL]

[Marik Bentusi]

[quote]As the legs unfurl to power the jump both have to move at exactly the same time. If they didn't, the animal would start to spiral out of control.
[...]
their legs outpace their nervous system.
[...]
Instead, the gears, which engage before the jump, let the issus lock its legs together—synchronizing their movements to a precision of 1/300,000 of a second.
[...]
It's built for "high precision and speed in one direction," he says. "It's a prototype for a new type of gear."[/quote]

neat.

[Provost]

Said it before, I'll say it again.

New tyranid bio-form.

[flyhard]

Its not new lmao, we JUST NOTICED