Insects Use Gears in Hind Legs to Jump
Young planthoppers use gear wheels to coordinate their legs when jumping.
Young planthopper insects (Issus coleoptratus) can jump about three feet (a meter) in a single bound. They employ gear wheels—complete with teeth that interlock with grooves—to coordinate their hind legs during high-speed jumps.
Their two hind legs move within 30 microseconds of each other during a launch, compared with the two- to three-millisecond delay between the two hind legs of grasshoppers. The young planthoppers, called nymphs, eject themselves into the air at about ten feet (three meters) per second. (Related: "How Do Fleas Jump? New Video Solves Mystery.")
Without the gear wheels on their hind legs to tightly coordinate their movements, these nymphs could find themselves spinning through the air if one of their hind limbs moved
