Re-inventing the wheel....or not?

One of the greatest human inventions is the wheel.

And this begs the question: if the wheel is so useful and great, why haven’t nature thought of it before (read evolution), it certainly has enough time to do all the thinking.

Well, the answer may surprise you. Nature had thought of it already.

Enter the bacteria’s flagella! It is a freely rotating piece of tail-like structure that projects from the cell body, use for locomotion. In simple terms, it’s a motor propeller.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagella

Scientist are even studying this to develop and build nano-sized motors.

Anyhow, wheel structures are still not seen in macro organisms. The problem of entangled blood vessels, the need to suspend a freely rotating axial still buffers the greatest innovator. Some also argue that there is really no real edge as the wheel needs complimenting accessories like roads to be truelly effective.

Puts a new light to the phrase “reinventing the wheel”.

be careful what you are encouraging....

I read some where that there was once this paleontologist who suspects that a certain area buries beneath it are tons of dinosaur bones. He is not sure (nobody can be 100% sure of such things), and neither does he has the money to hired diggers to do the physical work for him.

So, he thought of a smart idea. He placed a reward for every piece of dinosaur found and bought to him.

This is very smart. He is not paying for the work, he is only paying for the results. No risk for him whatsoever. Clearly defined KPI and motivation factors.

So what's wrong with this idea? The flaws later reveals itself.

Turns out there were in fact buried bones in the area. But the people who finds them breaks them into smaller pieces in order to maximize their profit.

Bad news for the paleontologist.