Wheels in animals

[Genady]

Wheels are ubiquitous in human designed mechanisms but absent in animal organs. Why is it so?

[mistermack]

It's not the wheel that's the problem, it's the axle. 

[studiot]

Actually nature uses rotation in some suprising ways.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=rotating+microbes&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAY7g0_8kobF67VuYcPl8mgs7idJ3VWaj_&gbv=2&oq=rotating+microbes&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3..0i546l2.11096.32186.0.32384.19.16.1.2.2.0.176.2198.0j16.16.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.19.2308.MRvTaHdMUtY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gömböc

19 minutes ago, mistermack said:

It's not the wheel that's the problem, it's the axle. 

good point +1

Edited January 6, 2023 by studiot

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, studiot said:

Actually nature uses rotation in some suprising ways.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=rotating+microbes&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAY7g0_8kobF67VuYcPl8mgs7idJ3VWaj_&gbv=2&oq=rotating+microbes&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3..0i546l2.11096.32186.0.32384.19.16.1.2.2.0.176.2198.0j16.16.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.19.2308.MRvTaHdMUtY

Animal organs.

27 minutes ago, Genady said:

absent in animal organs

 

22 minutes ago, mistermack said:

It's not the wheel that's the problem, it's the axle

I am not sure there is a problem, yet. OP just states a fact.

[studiot]

2 minutes ago, Genady said:

Animal organs.

 

I don't follow the significance of limiting this to organs?

What about the tortoise ?

 

What even do you mean by a wheel ?

Here is an image of the famous falkirk wheel.

 

 

[Genady]

1 minute ago, studiot said:

I don't follow the significance of limiting this to organs?

That was the subject of the OP question. There are wheels in microbial world, but not in macroscopic world of animal organs. Why?

For clarity:

Quote

In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function.

 

4 minutes ago, studiot said:

What about the tortoise ?

What about it?

 

4 minutes ago, studiot said:

What even do you mean by a wheel ?

This:

Quote

a circular frame of hard material that may be solid, partly solid, or spoked and that is capable of turning on an axle

 

[studiot]

I still think your question is rather limited for no obvious reason.

Here is a Wikipedia discussion on the wider subject.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_and_wheels_in_the_natural_world

[Sensei]

45 minutes ago, mistermack said:

It's not the wheel that's the problem, it's the axle. 

Energy is the problem. The wheel can only get from the top of mountain to the bottom of the valley just once. It must somehow get back to the top to roll again.

..and there are animals that put their tail in their mouths and roll swiftly through the desert..

 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, studiot said:

I still think your question is rather limited for no obvious reason.

Here is a Wikipedia discussion on the wider subject.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_and_wheels_in_the_natural_world

From your link:

Quote

No known multicellular organism (an organism made of many cells) can spin part of its body while keeping the rest of its body still. 

I wonder, why.

2 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Energy is the problem. The wheel can only get from the top of mountain to the bottom of the valley just once. It must somehow get back to the top to roll again.

..and there are animals that put their tail in their mouths and roll swiftly through the desert..

The OP question refers to a variety of wheels used in a variety of human designed mechanisms.

[studiot]

 

I don't have this book to hand at the moment and I can't rememember if he covers wheels explicitly,  but Steven Vogel does an excellent job investigating the reasons how and why nature and man achieve identical mechanical goals in the sifferent ways they do.

 

Fo example no muscle can generate a push force by itself.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Wheels are ubiquitous in human designed mechanisms but absent in animal organs. Why is it so?

I'm still a bit confused by your question. Did you expect to find "a circular frame of hard material that may be solid, partly solid, or spoked and that is capable of turning on an axle" somewhere inside something like a liver? Can you give an example where a wheel might have developed?

I also don't see why you might expect to find wheels in animal organs developed through Evolution, simply because they are designed by humans for specific applications.

Edited January 6, 2023 by zapatos

[mistermack]

I think the fundamental problem of evolving an axle is the transfer of materials across a sliding bearing. While it's not theoretically impossible, it might only be possible at rates that are not enough, in the real world. So sending fuel etc, and removing waste can't be done enough to maintain life. The alternative would be to have the wheel living independently of the body. But it's never happened, it's probably not competitive. 

Anyway, a wheel's not much use on land, without a road.  And very little use under water, with neutral bouyancy. I can't see many applications where one would evolve as an organ.

[Externet]

Ten years ago...

 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, Externet said:

Ten years ago...

 

Right! But I've expected the microbial answer and that's why have specified animal organs in the OP. It didn't help, though.

12 minutes ago, mistermack said:

the transfer of materials across a sliding bearing

Yes, this might be a fundamental obstacle.

32 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Can you give an example where a wheel might have developed?

If we designed a pump for moving blood around, aka heart, it would certainly have a few wheels in it.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

sending fuel etc, and removing waste

Dawkins:

Quote

The problem of supplying a freely rotating organ with blood vessels (not to mention nerves) that don't tie themselves in knots is too vivid to need spelling out!

Why Don't Any Animals Have Wheels? | Live Science:

Quote

without attachment points, how would living wheels receive nutrients and expel waste?

 

[Genady]

Turned out that Richard Dawkins wrote an article 26 years ago exactly about this question.

Quote

Richard Dawkins explained in a classic 1996 article ... published in The Sunday Times.

(Why Don't Any Animals Have Wheels? | Live Science)

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

If we designed a pump for moving blood around, aka heart, it would certainly have a few wheels in it.

I'm having a hard time imagining the human design for moving blood around, made of and powered by animal components, that contained wheels. Unless perhaps it is a wheel that doesn't actually spin.

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I'm having a hard time imagining the human design for moving blood around, made of and powered by animal components, that contained wheels. Unless perhaps it is a wheel that doesn't actually spin.

However, such a design works in bacteria. Not a human design, with a spinning wheel, powered by and made of the bacterial components.

PS. Not for moving blood, of course, in bacteria, but for a different function.

[CharonY]

8 minutes ago, Genady said:

However, such a design works in bacteria. Not a human design, with a spinning wheel, powered by and made of the bacterial components.

PS. Not for moving blood, of course, in bacteria, but for a different function.

Bacteria? Do mean something like flagella? In eukaryotes you can find functionally similar structures (though they are built differently) including eukaryotic flagella and cilia. However the movement is more like a beating undulation but those are actually involved in fluid movement (either moving through fluid or to move fluids).

[Genady]

19 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Bacteria? Do mean something like flagella? In eukaryotes you can find functionally similar structures (though they are built differently) including eukaryotic flagella and cilia. However the movement is more like a beating undulation but those are actually involved in fluid movement (either moving through fluid or to move fluids).

Yes. These wheels appear as cellular components. But not as components of a multi-cellular organ. I think that both Dawkins and @mistermack have explained it well. (It's fun to imagine an aquatic animal that moves by such a motor.)

[CharonY]

2 minutes ago, Genady said:

Yes. These wheels appear as cellular components. But not as components of a multi-cellular organ. I think that both Dawkins and @mistermack have explained it well. (It's fun to imagine an aquatic animal that moves by such a motor.)

I see, you are referring to macroscopic structures then. There are gear-like  structures in planthoppers, but as highlighted by bothers, free-spinning cellular structures would be very difficult to  create and maintain in the first place and likely not be very functional 

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

However, such a design works in bacteria. Not a human design, with a spinning wheel, powered by and made of the bacterial components.

PS. Not for moving blood, of course, in bacteria, but for a different function.

I wonder if we don't see it in something like organs simply due to the idea that scaling up might simply make it unworkable in something so relatively large.

[mistermack]

You can easily design a wheel that would work in animals. Just grow four circular bony structures like antlers, that harden and require no sustenance. Have them mounted on ball and socket joints like our hips. The problem would be how something like that would evolve in the first place. For a feature to evolve, it needs to be viable and desireable in every stage of it's chain of evolution. That couldn't happen in that sort of arrangement. The end result might be ok, but the route to it is unviable.

Edit: You'd still have the problem of propulsion, of course.

Edited January 6, 2023 by mistermack

[zapatos]

2 minutes ago, mistermack said:

You can easily design a wheel that would work in animals. Just grow four circular bony structures like antlers, that harden and require no sustenance. Have them mounted on ball and socket joints like our hips. The problem would be how something like that would evolve in the first place. For a feature to evolve, it needs to be viable and desireable in every stage of it's chain of evolution. That couldn't happen in that sort of arrangement. The end result might be ok, but the route to it is unviable.

I would think powering a wheel would be a major obstacle to it working on a large scale.

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I wonder if we don't see it in something like organs simply due to the idea that scaling up might simply make it unworkable in something so relatively large.

Yes, it looks so. This is about what 

3 hours ago, mistermack said:

I think the fundamental problem of evolving an axle is the transfer of materials across a sliding bearing. While it's not theoretically impossible, it might only be possible at rates that are not enough, in the real world. So sending fuel etc, and removing waste can't be done enough to maintain life. The alternative would be to have the wheel living independently of the body. But it's never happened, it's probably not competitive. 

And

40 minutes ago, CharonY said:

free-spinning cellular structures would be very difficult to  create and maintain in the first place and likely not be very functional 

And what Dawkins wrote in 1996 (I just repeat it here as it has been quoted above):

Quote

The problem of supplying a freely rotating organ with blood vessels (not to mention nerves) that don't tie themselves in knots is too vivid to need spelling out!

[TheVat]

6 hours ago, mistermack said:

It's not the wheel that's the problem, it's the axle. 

The scaling problem (with a selective advantage at every step pf the way) seems key, so that leaves some sort of bizarre mutation that miraculously worked, e.g. an animal which can turn a nonvascularized bony protrusion with its hands or paws.  The odds seem astronomically small.

More possible could be an animal that can already turn itself into a sort of wheel, like an armadillo or hedgehog, developing some way to accentuate its mobility as a wheel - perhaps providing motive force with puffs of air or side-projecting limbs that kick against the ground to keep rolling.