This machine by Arthur Ganson just blew my mind: its engine runs at 200 revolutions per minute but the last gear of its 12-gear mechanism is locked to a block of concrete. It looks still but, in reality, it is moving. You just can’t see it because it completes one revolution every two trillion years. How the hell is this possible?
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The natural world might be awe-inspiring, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t share similarities with the technological world that we inhabit. In fact, as biologists have come to look at creatures in closer detail, they’ve discovered that some of them have been using basics of engineering—that we now take for granted—all along. Here are five of our favorite creatures that have evolved into biological machines.
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When you think of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom, large, muscular mammals will probably be the first that come to mind. But steady among them is the inconspicuous adolescent issus, who can hit an acceleration of 400 gs in 2 milliseconds flat (humans lose consciousness over 5 gs)—all thanks to what scientists have now identified as the first biological set of gears ever discovered.
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