Rolling Animals - Disadvantages of Wheels

Disadvantages of Wheels

Wheels incur mechanical and other disadvantages in certain environments and situations, which would represent a decreased fitness when compared with limbed locomotion. These disadvantages suggest that, even barring the biological constraints discussed above, the absence of wheels in multicellular life may not, in fact, be the "missed opportunity" of biology that it first seems. On the contrary, given the mechanical disadvantages and restricted usefulness of wheels compared with limbs, the central question can be reversed: not "Why doesn't nature produce wheels?", but rather, "Why don't human vehicles make more use of limbs?" The use of wheels, rather than limbs, in many engineered vehicles can likely be attributed to the complexity of design required to construct and control limbs, rather than to a consistent functional advantage of wheels over limbs.