Seeing this, and making this mental association reminded me of how, when I was a kid, my mom would tell me that she didn’t like the various Baja Beetles I used to eagerly point out on the road as we drove, because she thought they looked too “intestinal” from the rear. I’m pretty sure she was referring to the headers that were usually visible on these. I’m not sure I really knew what she was going on about then, because I just thought they were cool, period, but I think I see it now. I still think they’re cool, though, intestinal or not. Or maybe she just liked cars without the innards visible. To my eyes a water pump gasket for a 4-cylinder Toyota Tacoma looks oddly biological too. I remember in my college intro-bio course getting into how muscles worked and it just hit me; muscles are just one-way hydraulic cylinders. That revelation and the fact that holes in bones are called “foramina” are about the only things I retained from that class. So, long way around to heartily agree that sometimes engines or other mechanical things feel like biological things.
