u/TheIcerios

In Ape Escape, these big cogwheels show up as early as the jungle levels. Spin it with a stun club, and it'll usually move a gate or some other contraption vital to catching some monkeys. I've run into them a bunch of times so far in my play-through.

The Professor decides to leave me mail in Wabi Sabi Wall - fairly late game - to explain this early game mechanic.

First he plasters pictures of his face on pretty much everything from walls to uniforms, then he makes me chase monkeys around inside the body of a sleepy prehistoric creature he named Dexter, and now he's in stage 16 telling me something I needed to know to complete stage 4!!