A coin of Agathocles of Syracuse, Sicily, showing three legs with wings and a head in their joining point.
The triskelion is a motif with central symmetry used since ancient times. A variant with three human legs appears in the medieval flag of the Isle of Man. A variant with the head of Medusa in the union of the legs is associated with Sicily. It is not known the meaning it had in antiquity or its original Greek name.
The hoop snake, a creature of legend in the United States and Australia, is said to grasp its tail in its mouth and roll like a wheel towards its prey.[4] Japanese culture includes a similar mythical creature, the Tsuchinoko.[2]
Neil R. Jones' 1937 story "On the Planet Fragment" features aliens dubbed the Disci, which are shaped like wheels, with limbs around the circumference. One of their methods of locomotion is a "rolling motion like that of a cartwheel."[6]
The 1944 science fiction short story "Arena", by Fredric Brown, features a telepathic alien called an Outsider, which is roughly spherical and moves by rolling.[7] The story was the basis for a 1967 Star Trek episode of the same name, and possibly also a 1964 episode of The Outer Limits entitled "Fun and Games", though neither television treatment included a spherical creature.[8]
E. E. "Doc" Smith's 1950 novel First Lensman features the fontema, which consists of two wheels connected by articulations to an axle, lives on sunlight, and has only two behaviors: rolling, and conjugation/mating, which is scarcely more complicated.
The Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher invented a creature that was capable of rolling itself forward, which he named Pedalternorotandomovens centroculatus articulosus. He illustrated this creature in his 1951 lithograph Wentelteefje (also known by the English title Curl-up).[9][10]
A 1956 Scrooge McDuck comic, Land Beneath the Ground!, by Carl Barks, introduced Terries and Fermies (a play on the phrase terra firma), creatures who move from place to place by rolling. The Terries and Fermies have made a sport of their rolling abilities, causing earthquakes in the process.[11][12]
Northern Irish author James White's Sector General series features "Rollers" from the planet Drambo, doughnut-shaped aquatic organisms that do not have hearts, but which instead must roll continuously to maintain circulation by means of gravity.[13][14] The Rollers are described in the short story "Spacebird" in the 1980 edition of Ambulance Ship, and in other works in the series.[13][15][16]
The 1982 puppet-animated fantasy film The Dark Crystal, directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, introduced the character Fizzgig, a dog-like companion creature that rolls from place to place.[17] In 2015, an original film puppet of Fizzgig was put on auction with an estimated value of $12,000–$15,000.[18]
Tuf Voyaging, a 1986 science fiction novel by George R. R. Martin, features an alien called a Rolleram, described as a "berserk living cannonball of enormous size", which kills its prey by rolling over it and crushing it, before digesting it externally. Adults of the species weigh approximately six metric tons and can roll faster than 50 kilometres per hour (31 miles per hour).[21]
In the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series, which first appeared in 1991, the eponymous Sonic and his sidekick Tails are capable of moving by rolling.[22][23]
Toy animals with wheels dating from the Pre-Columbian era were uncovered by archaeologists in Veracruz, Mexico, in the 1940s. The indigenous peoples of this region did not use wheels for transportation prior to the arrival of Europeans.[3]
L. Frank Baum's 1907 children's novel Ozma of Oz features humanoid creatures with wheels instead of hands and feet, called Wheelers.[26] Their wheels are composed of keratin, which has been suggested by biologists as a means of avoiding nutrient and waste transfer problems with living wheels.[9][27] Despite moving quickly on open terrain, the Wheelers are stymied by obstacles in their path that do not hinder creatures with limbs.[26] They also make an appearance in the 1985 film Return to Oz, based partly on Ozma of Oz.
The surrealist artist Remedios Varo (1908–1963) painted images of fantastical creatures with wheels as their bases, such as Homo rodans (1959),[28]Fantastic animal (1959),[29] and The Ladies at Bonhuer.[30]
The 1966 novella The Last Castle by Jack Vance describes "power-wagons" as creatures with a mix of biological and mechanical elements, including wheels.[31]
Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions includes a brief description of fictional author Kilgore Trout's novel Plague on Wheels, which features a planet inhabited by sentient wheeled automobiles.
Evsise, the narrator of Harlan Ellison’s 1975 novelette "I'm Looking for Kadak", describes himself thus: "I am squat and round and move very close to the ground by a series of caterpillar feet set around the rim of ball joints and sockets on either side of my toches ... and when I’ve wound the feet tight, I have to jump off the ground so they can unwind and then I move forward again which makes my movement very peculiar ..."[33][34]
Chorlton and the Wheelies, a British stop-motion-animated television series that aired from 1976 to 1979, was set in "Wheelie World", which was inhabited by three-wheeled creatures called "wheelies".[35]
Piers Anthony's 1977 book Cluster and its sequels feature aliens called Polarians, which locomote by gripping and balancing atop a large ball. The ball is a living, though temporarily separable, portion of the Polarian's body.[36]
A 1997 novel in the Animorphs series, The Andalite Chronicles, includes an alien called a Mortron, composed of two separate entities: a yellow and black bottom half with four wheels, and a red, elongated head with razor-sharp teeth and concealed wings.[39]
The 2000 novel The Amber Spyglass, by English author Philip Pullman, features an alien race known as the Mulefa, which have diamond-shaped bodies with one leg at the front and back and one on each side. The Mulefa use large, disk-shaped seed pods as wheels. They mount the pods on bone axles on their front and back legs, while propelling themselves with their side legs. The Mulefa have a symbiotic relationship with the seed pod trees, which depend on the rolling action to crack open the pods and allow the seeds to disperse.[40]
In the 2000 novel Wheelers, by English mathematician Ian Stewart and reproductive biologist Jack Cohen, a Jovian species called "blimps" has developed the ability to biologically produce machines called "wheelers", which use wheels for locomotion.[41][42]
The children's television series Jungle Junction, which premiered in 2009, features hybrid jungle animals with wheels rather than legs;[43] one such animal, Ellyvan, is a hybrid of an elephant and a van.[44] These animals traverse their habitat on elevated highways.[45]
The 2011 video game Dark Souls features Wheel Skeletons (or "Bonewheels"), which wear a wooden-spiked wheel, allowing them to roll at high speed.[46]
The 2021 Japanese children's stop motion animated series Pui Pui Molcar features guinea pig/vehicle hybrids. They are sentient, but are shown being driven around on roads by humans. Although they have wheels, they are usually shown using them like feet to walk and run.[47][48]
Related Research Articles
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction with axles, allow heavy objects to be moved easily facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Wheels are also used for other purposes, such as a ship's wheel, steering wheel, potter's wheel, and flywheel.
Propulsion is the generation of force by any combination of pushing or pulling to modify the translational motion of an object, which is typically a rigid body but may also concern a fluid. The term is derived from two Latin words: pro, meaning before or forward; and pellere, meaning to drive. A propulsion system consists of a source of mechanical power, and a propulsor.
A Door into Ocean is a 1986 feminist science fiction novel by Joan Slonczewski. The novel's themes include ecofeminism and nonviolent revolution, as well as Slonczewski's own knowledge in the field of biology.
Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, Billina the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People Too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein, published on July 30, 1907, was the official third book of L. Frank Baum's Oz series. It was the first in which Baum was clearly intending a series of Oz books.
Tik-Tok of Oz is the eighth Land of Oz book written by L. Frank Baum, published on June 19, 1914. The book has little to do with Tik-Tok and is primarily the quest of the Shaggy Man to rescue his brother, and his resulting conflict with the Nome King.
The Magic of Oz is the thirteenth Land of Oz book written by L. Frank Baum. Published on June 7, 1919, one month after the author's death, The Magic of Oz relates the unsuccessful attempt of the Munchkin boy Kiki Aru and former Nome King Ruggedo to conquer Oz.
The Land of Oz is a magical country introduced in the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow.
Tik-Tok is a fictional "mechanical man" from the Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. He has been termed "the prototype robot", and is widely considered to be one of the first robots to appear in modern literature, though the term "Robot" was not used until the 1920s, in the play R.U.R.
Chorlton and the Wheelies is an animated children's television series that ran from 26 September 1976 until 17 December 1978 on the British television channel ITV. 40 episodes were produced. The show followed the adventures of Chorlton, an anthropomorphic "happiness dragon", in "Wheelie World".
Mombi is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's classic children's series of Oz Books. She is the most significant antagonist in the second Oz book The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), and is alluded to in other works. Mombi plays a very important role in the fictional history of Oz.
Joan Lyn Slonczewski is an American microbiologist at Kenyon College and a science fiction writer who explores biology and space travel. Their books have twice earned the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel: A Door into Ocean (1987) and The Highest Frontier (2011). With John W. Foster and Erik Zinser, they coauthor the textbook, Microbiology: An Evolving Science now in its fifth edition. They explore ideas of biology, politics, and artificial intelligence at their blog Ultraphyte.
The Cowardly Lion of Oz (1923) is the seventeenth in the series of Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the third written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. It was illustrated by John R. Neill.
The Scalawagons of Oz (1941) is the thirty-fifth in the series of Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and continued by his successors; it is the second volume in the series both written and illustrated by John R. Neill.
Terrestrial locomotion has evolved as animals adapted from aquatic to terrestrial environments. Locomotion on land raises different problems than that in water, with reduced friction being replaced by the increased effects of gravity.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, known in Japan as Ozu no Mahōtsukai, is a Japanese anime television series adaptation based on four of the original early 20th century Oz books by L. Frank Baum. In Japan, the series aired on TV Tokyo from 1986 to 1987. It consists of 52 episodes, which explain other parts of the Oz stories, including the events that happened after Dorothy returned home.
The Land of Ev is a fictional country in the Oz books of L. Frank Baum and his successors. The country was first visited in Baum's third Oz novel, 1907's Ozma of Oz, and was the first of Baum's countries that surround the Land of Oz. This book introduced the Nome King, a recurring villain who lives underground beneath the Land of Ev.
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. Biologists have offered several explanations for the apparent absence of biological wheels, and wheeled creatures have appeared often in speculative fiction.
Paradox in Oz is a 1999 novel written by Edward Einhorn. As its title indicates, the book is an entry in the series of books about the Land of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and a host of successors.
Talking animals are a common element in mythology and folk tales, children's literature, and modern comic books and animated cartoons. Fictional talking animals often are anthropomorphic, possessing human-like qualities. Whether they are realistic animals or fantastical ones, talking animals serve a wide range of uses in literature, from teaching morality to providing social commentary. Realistic talking animals are often found in fables, religious texts, indigenous texts, wilderness coming of age stories, naturalist fiction, animal autobiography, animal satire, and in works featuring pets and domesticated animals. Conversely, fantastical and more anthropomorphic animals are often found in the fairy tale, science fiction, toy story, and fantasy genres.
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