FALSE. That would be ridiculous, but some do have gears.
Scientist at Cambridge have discovered that the common planthopper bug Issus Coeleoptratus has gears when in its larval stage. The 1.5 mm bugs were observed jumping in less than 2 milliseconds (thousandths of a second), the two hind legs kicking off 30 microseconds (millionths of a second) apart. This is far faster than a nerve cell could fire to order the two sets of muscles to operate in sequence, so how were they achieving these speeds?
The answer lay in notches - 10 to 15 of them - on facing sides of their trochanters - the tops of their legs where they meet a hip like structure called the coxa. The notches meshed together like gears as the legs moved ensuring both legs would jump as one.
Already other planthopper species have been identified with the same gears and there may be many more out there. What's more the distinctive 'sharks fin' shape of the gears could change the way engineers construct gears at nano-scale.
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