Will animals ever evolve wheels?

[05C40]

Not a wheel, but it is rotary locomotion.
Link: Archaellum - Wikipedia
ETA: Flagellum - Wikipedia

 

[BlooVooDoo]

I’d guess the main obstacle is that the incremental steps leading to a fully functioning wheel are not advantageous to the organism so that path of evolution is not pursued. Hard to imagine how proto axels, spokes, wheels, etc that don’t have rotating function would not be huge hindrances in terms of locomotion and resource consumption.

This and the idea of genetic constraints are why it is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Even if the genetic variability existed and intermediate structures arose without selective disadvantage and selection then favored continued development, a significant limitation is a vasculature system necessary to provide nutrients to the tissues of the wheel would be torn by spinning, at least after some number of rotations. It would almost have to be a microorganism that incorporated inorganic structures as wheels and used simple appendages to push or pull itself on the wheels. Something like a tardigrade that adopted a larval caddisfly habit.

 

[superrific]

This and the idea of genetic constraints are why it is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Even if the genetic variability existed and intermediate structures arose without selective disadvantage and selection then favored continued development, a significant limitation is a vasculature system necessary to provide nutrients to the tissues of the wheel would be torn by spinning, at least after some number of rotations. It would almost have to be a microorganism that incorporated inorganic structures as wheels and used simple appendages to push or pull itself on the wheels. Something like a tardigrade that adopted a larval caddisfly habit.

Are you a biologist? Not too many people would know tardigrades with caddisfly habits. I certainly don't.

 

[dukeman92]

 

[Ddseddse]

I feel like it's going the other way round. Robots are evolving from wheels to feet/limbs.

 

[ZenMode]

Will animals ever evolve wheels?​

Must have been one heck of a bong rip.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Are you a biologist? Not too many people would know tardigrades with caddisfly habits. I certainly don't.

Yes.

 

[superrific]

Yes.

What sub specialty?

 

[an0maly]

This and the idea of genetic constraints are why it is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Even if the genetic variability existed and intermediate structures arose without selective disadvantage and selection then favored continued development, a significant limitation is a vasculature system necessary to provide nutrients to the tissues of the wheel would be torn by spinning, at least after some number of rotations. It would almost have to be a microorganism that incorporated inorganic structures as wheels and used simple appendages to push or pull itself on the wheels. Something like a tardigrade that adopted a larval caddisfly habit.

Or posit a planet where immense flat plains something like the salt flats in California persist in an ecosystem, and a predator-prey dynamic arises that evolves a bone like wheel that then separates to free movement in maturity, but is held by a sort of axel construction. Given the strange things that have evolved in Earth, with this posited environment it seems barely possible.

All we have got is the rotating flagellum on certain bacteria, and rotifers which duplicate a wheel effect with mouth parts. Immobile "wheels" have evolved, like this extinct shark, but that is not what we are discussing, I guess.