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Japanese bullet trains used to be a nuisance for people living near rail tunnels because they produced a cacophonous sonic boom when they reemerged into the open. Then the industry engaged a designer who also happened to be a member of the Japanese equivalent of the Audubon Society. He contemplated birds that pass from one medium to another—air to water—with minimal resistance and modeled the nose cone of the new high-speed train on the beak of one, the kingfisher. It not only achieved significant noise reduction, but also a bonus of 15% energy savings.

Engineering like this that draws inspiration from nature to solve our toughest technological challenges is known as biomimicry. Pull the word apart and it means just what it says: life + mimesis = imitating nature. It is not about exploiting nature’s resources—just leveraging the knowledge she’s accumulated through nearly four billion years of evolution. And the applications are nearly endless.

When the floor of the Indian Ocean trembled in 2004—triggering a tsunami destined for Aceh, Indonesia and other coasts—bats awakened frantically from their daily sleep and goats, dogs, leopards and buffalo raced inland. Tethered Sri Lankan elephants broke their chains and moved to higher ground. In the case of the fleeing elephants, it was their pacinian corpuscles—the nerve receptors sensitive to vibration in their trunks and the soles of their feet—that tipped them off. What might seismologists learn from elephants and animals’ sixth sense in issuing advance warnings of tsunamis and earthquakes?

When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, thousand-year-old Seven Sisters oak trees withstood the hurricane’s gale because their roots extend horizontally twisting themselves around those of adjacent oaks, essentially holding hands to withstand the brute force. What might architects glean from this design when planning to rebuild battered coastal communities?

These are the kinds of questions the science of biomimicry asks. The answers to their queries—and those posed by other disciplines struggling with intractable problems—have resulted in numerous groundbreaking technological advances, from bioplastics that use CO₂ (something we have plenty of) as a feedstock, to copying the shape of tubercles (which cover a humpback whale’s fins and contribute to its aerodynamics) to make airplanes 32% more fuel efficient.

Biomimicry kindles a strong argument for biodiversity preservation. As we humans have increased in number and expanded our frontiers beyond the biosphere’s ability to regenerate, we have left countless species grasping at the edge of survival if we haven’t already eliminated them. Causing mass extinctions has so many disadvantages that it seems superfluous to note another. But each plant or animal species lost is a missed opportunity for us to learn from nature’s biological, chemical and engineering expertise.

As we feed our insatiable appetite for natural resources, we not only eliminate possible medicines and cures, but the solutions that might just get us through this evolutionary knothole. Scientists who are looking at design through nature’s lens offer our greatest hope—not just for humans, but for all life.

Additional resources:
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus

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