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Several organisms are capable of rolling locomotion. However, true wheels and propellers—despite their utility in human vehicles—do not play a significant role in the movement of living things (with the exception of the corkscrew-like flagella of many prokaryotes). Biologists have offered several explanations for the apparent absence of biological wheels, and wheeled creatures have appeared often in speculative fiction.

Given the ubiquity of wheels in human technology, and the existence of biological analogues of many other technologies (such as wings and lenses), the lack of wheels in nature has seemed, to many scientists, to demand explanation—and the phenomenon is broadly explained by two factors: first, there are several developmental and evolutionary obstacles to the advent of a wheel by natural selection, and secondly, wheels have several drawbacks relative to other means of propulsion (such as walking, running, or slithering) in natural environments, which would tend to preclude their evolution. This environment-specific disadvantage has also led humans in certain regions to abandon wheels at least once in history. (Full article...)

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