[unsupp0rted]

If we had never invented gears, but somehow had invented microscopes, we might've eventually stumbled on this insect and gotten the idea for mechanical gears from observing its legs.

What other things on the technology tree did we skip over and might we discover out in some insect, bird or fish?

We still don't know how tiny insect brains are capable of using so little energy to do so much navigation and learning+memory, right?

[midoridensha]

>What other things on the technology tree did we skip over and might we discover out in some insect, bird or fish?

Or beyond that, what fundamental physics principles have we somehow missed? Perhaps faster-than-light travel is actually really simple, and we somehow just haven't discovered it yet. Meanwhile, some much more primitive civilization elsewhere has, and is going to invade us soon with their FTL spaceships armed with... cannons equivalent to our Medieval weapons. They'll be in for a big surprise when we shoot back with guided missiles.