Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem. But it is not a good example at all. Even if nature could have evolved a moose on wheels, it surely would have opted not to. Wheels are good only in a world with roads and rails. They bog down in any terrain that is soft, slippery, steep, or uneven. Legs are better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even today, when it seems as if the world has become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection. Steven Pinker
About This Quote

In the quote, the author of the book, Richard Dawkins, is describing how evolution works. He is saying that evolution is made of trial and error and has a difficult time finding the best solution to a problem. This quote makes it apparent that evolution works slowly and can get stuck on something that is not beneficial. If a creature does not have a good enough or efficient way of getting around it will not survive.

Source: How The Mind Works

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