[NicknamedBob]

"And yet, an oddity such as a steering oar could be a useful contraption for a minuscule fluid-dwelling organism."

"Maybe; if it knew where it was steering to!"

Apparently, it had some primitive senses about that. Ian Musgrave mentioned that one species used Brownian Motion to adjust its heading, before activating its motor again.

In Rhodobacter sphaeroides, the genes equivalent to MotA and MotB have only 19% sequence identity, so it is not clear if these proteins are divergent modifcations of the ancestral MotA MotB or convergent evolution of an unrelated motor(11,13). The Rhodbacter motor doesn't switch as does the other motors, but turns on and off, and re-orientation is via brownian motion

It's an interesting article, not very long, and fairly understandable.

[Elsie]

Ian Musgrave mentioned that one species used Brownian Motion to adjust its heading...

That would be a neat trick; considering that BM is RANDOM!