{"id":33177,"date":"2011-03-27T15:44:40","date_gmt":"2011-03-27T15:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/beetle-turns-itself-into-a-wheel-that%e2%80%99s-how-it-rolls-not-exactly-rocket-science\/"},"modified":"2011-03-27T15:44:40","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T15:44:40","slug":"beetle-turns-itself-into-a-wheel-that%e2%80%99s-how-it-rolls-not-exactly-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/beetle-turns-itself-into-a-wheel-that%e2%80%99s-how-it-rolls-not-exactly-rocket-science.php","title":{"rendered":"Beetle turns itself into a wheel (that\u2019s how it rolls) | Not Exactly Rocket Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ee218_Tiger_beetle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4163\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ee218_Tiger_beetle.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"610\" height=\"376\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a>The southern beaches of Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, USA, are part of a national park. To protect the area, only residents and staff are allowed to drive their vehicles on the sands. But there are plenty of wheels nonetheless &ndash; small, living ones.<\/p><p>The beaches are home to the beautiful coastal tiger beetle (<em>Cicindela dorsalis media<\/em>). Tiger beetles are among the fastest of insect runners, but their larvae are slow and worm-like. If they&rsquo;re exposed and threatened, running isn&rsquo;t an option. Instead, they turn themselves into living wheels. They leap into the air, coil their bodies into a loop, and hit the ground spinning. The wind carries them to safety.<\/p><p>The fact that a long, worm-like animal can jump and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0\">roll<\/a> is amazing in its own right. The ability is even more remarkable because the tiger beetle is &ldquo;one of the best-studied insect species in North America&rdquo; and until a few years ago, no one had ever seen it doing this. Alan Harvey and Sarah Zukoff were the first. They write, &ldquo;[Sarah] was walking through some unusually loose sandy drifts on Cumberland Island and happened to kick up ...<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/ee218_8FkcKPk9rno\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The southern beaches of Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, USA, are part of a national park. To protect the area, only residents and staff are allowed to drive their vehicles on the sands. But there are plenty of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/beetle-turns-itself-into-a-wheel-that%e2%80%99s-how-it-rolls-not-exactly-rocket-science.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}