.. . . as my son used to say repeatedly as he launched himself off the couch repeatedly. But this really is:
They’ve discovered that a common kind of insect hops with the aid of gears:
There was a tiny row of bumps on the inside of each leg where it met the insect’s body. The bumps looked just like the teeth of gears. And when the planthopper jumped, they acted like gears too — as teeth meshed, the legs turned in synchrony. Sutton says his finding, published this week in Science, is the first mechanical gear system ever observed in nature.
Somehow, this makes me feel a little bit better about bugs.
