Bats and dolphins perfected sophisticated echo-ranging systems millions of years before human engineers gave us sonar and radar. Snakes have infrared heat-detectors for sensing prey, predating the Sidewinder missile. Two groups of fish, one in the New World and one in the Old, have independently developed the electric battery, in some cases delivering currents strong enough to stun a man, in other cases using electric fields to navigate through turbid water. Squid have jet propulsion, enabling them to break the surface at 45mph and shoot through the air. Mole crickets have the megaphone, digging a double horn in the ground to amplify their already astonishingly loud song.
Beavers have the dam, flooding a private lake for their own safe conduct over water.
Millions of years before our agricultural revolution, ants planted, weeded and composted fungus gardens. Other ants tend and milk their own aphid cattle. Now, it is possible that the wheel seems so marvellous to us only by contrast with our undistinguished legs. No wonder Richard III offered his kingdom for four-footed transport. We also show up poorly against two-legged runners, in the form of ostriches and kangaroos.