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> if there was an evolution pathway to wheels It's hard to see one. Even a nice flat world with ample incentive and taking good "bearings" for granted, how can
by Terr_ 1y ago
> if there was an evolution pathway to wheels
It's hard to see one. Even a nice flat world with ample incentive and taking good "bearings" for granted, how can you evolve a wheel-organ that maintains a biological connection as well as being able to rotate an indefinite number of time?
A few difficult and grotesque endpoints:
* The wheel only rotates a fixed number of times before the creature must pivot and "unwind" in the opposite direction. This one seems most plausible, but it's not a real wheel.
* The main body builds replacement wheels internally (like tooth enamel) and periodically ejects a "dead" wheel which can be placed onto a spoke. This option would make it easier to generate very tough rim materials though.
* A biological quick-release/quick-connect system, where the wheel-organ disconnects to move, but then reconnects to flush waste and get more nutrients.
* A communal organism, where wheel-creatures are alive and semi-autonomous, with their own own way to acquire nutrients. Perhaps they would, er... suckle. Eeugh.
- ctack 1y agoIn one of Philip Pullmans His Dark Material novels there is a race of creatures that have a symbiosis with a tree whose huge perfectly round nut can be grasped by their fore and hind limbs and they roll around that way.
- protocolture 1y agoOne of the Animorphs spin offs had them too, it was meant to be specifically genetically engineered or something from distant memory.
- ctack 1y agoThere are lizards or beetles that tumble down sand dunes. Maybe cartwheeling humans could lead to some adaptation where the whole body becomes the wheel.