But I do think these beetles have really cool knees – no matter how they came by them.

Do you think the cork screw joint is found in all of the legs or just certain ones? I also think the screw and nut description is erroneous since there really is no “nut”, rather isn’t it more like a simple spiral bearing? That is something used for continuous motion.

Thoughts?

Saying the two do not intermingle strips away the conscience, the questions of right and wrong.

Sorry again.

And GEACK i like your comment “We have absolutely nothing to learn from EXCEPT nature”. it is related to a text found in the Bible….

“Ask, please, the domestic animals, and they will instruct you; also the winged creatures of the heavens, and they will tell you. Or show your concern to the earth, and it will instruct you; and the fishes of the sea will declare it to you.”—JOB 12:7, 8.
(by the way BIOMIMETICS is COOL)

Consider this, the engineer who designs a safer, more efficient aircraft wing would deserve to receive credit for his design. Likewise, the inventor who devises a more versatile bandage—or a more comfortable clothing material or a more efficient motor vehicle—deserves credit for his or her design. In fact, a manufacturer who copies someone else’s design but fails to acknowledge or credit the designer may be viewed as a criminal.
Does it seem logical to you, then, for highly trained researchers who crudely mimic systems in nature to solve difficult engineering problems to attribute the genius of devising the original idea to unintelligent evolution? If the copy requires an intelligent designer, what about the original? Really, who deserves more credit, the master artist or the student who imitates his technique?

I agree. Preferably in his own bedroom closet.

And for YUGI; how is this discovery “PROOF” of a Grand Designer? You might want to “BELIEVE” it, but there is not a HINT of proof here for your belief.

Please preach elsewhere.

Your English is quite good, no need for apologies. Never would have guessed you aren’t a native speaker. And I know you didn’t specifically mention “Intelligent Design”. But you got some very harsh, dismissive responses to your comment, and I thought it would be useful to provide some explanation. If your belief in a grand designer drives you to study the world, you’re in good company – most of history’s great scientists were believers of one type or another. But you should know that the idea of a “designer” in biology, here in the States and elsewhere, is currently tied up with the deeply dishonest “Intelligent Design” movement, which as I noted previously uses fake science as a political tool, in order to try to force a literal interpretation of the Christian bible into public-school science classes. Its supporters crop up on this site regularly, starting arguments about God that have little to do with the cool discoveries being reported, and many of the commenters here are tired of it. Thus the anger and dismissal.

I can’t explain my side any further because I am not good in English or lack of vocabulary…

Sorry for my English again….

Just to explain the strong reactions to Yugi: Intelligent Design is anti-science pretending to be science. ID doesn’t make predictions, or present testable hypotheses. The people who write ID “research” basically just point out something that we haven’t figured out yet, and say “See, this is too complicated for current science to explain; therefore Magic Designer did it”. As soon as you bring in the idea of the Magic Designer, you’ve essentially ended any effort to study the topic further. Science is figuring things out, constantly testing what you think you know against what we see in the real world. ID is just throwing up your hands and saying “It must be something we’ll never understand”. But IDers hide their anti-science behind sciency-sounding language in order to confuse those who aren’t paying much attention (like school boards). So the whole topic generates a lot of anger when someone throws it onto a board dedicated to real science. My guess is Yugi was just trolling anyway…

Why the assumption that we aren’t part of nature? And “whatever we invented by ourselves isn’t healthy”? How do you figure? We have absolutely nothing to learn from EXCEPT nature. We closely study what happens when things burn, and we make rockets and combustion engines. We closely study what happens when sand melts, and we make glass. We closely study what grows in a puddle full of excrement, and we learn to build sewers to keep from dying. Using your example, “plastic” isn’t unhealthy. Throwing tons of plastic into the oceans every year is pretty bad for everything else living on the planet, but failing to clean up after ourselves doesn’t make the plastic itself unhealthy or “unnatural”. After all, petroleum is just really thorough compost – people seem to forget that… Humanity’s (and the planet’s) problems aren’t due to our inventions being unhealthy – they’re due to our inability to control ourselves.

Personally, I don’t see how this discovery is proof either way for intelligent design. It reminds me of a picture in an old Time Life book showing an armored man compared to an armadillo, and a pickaxe compared to the tusks of a boar. There are only so many shapes that work well for their purpose. It’s not surprising to see that supposedly human inventions exist in nature serving similar purposes.