What do termite mounds in Africa, slime mold in Japan and fireflies in the U.S. have in common?
They may just hold the key to a more sustainable future – through the power of biomimicry.
Biomimicry, also known as biomimetics, is the process of copying nature for product or systems design. Advocates argue that nature has already solved the challenges we face, so why not learn from it?
Perhaps the most famous example is Velcro, which is used on everything from shoes to spacecraft.
But it all started with a walk in the wilderness.
Returning from a trip in the Alps, Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed plant seeds sticking to him and his dog.
On closer inspection, he saw that the seeds had hundreds of tiny hooks that were caught on his clothes and his dog’s fur. Mestral realized that if he replicated this system, it could be used as a reusable fastener. And so, Velcro was born.
That was back in 1941. Today, biomimicry goes far beyond just inspiring design – it includes nature as a fundamental element.
The Biomimicry Institute, for example, now promotes regenerative design in harmony with all life on earth.
Biomimicry is also being used to design products and systems that are helping to tackle the climate crisis, whether it’s through green energy or more efficient lighting.
Here are six of the most interesting examples of sustainable biomimetics solutions today.
While you might associate termites with damaging buildings, one architect in 1996 used them to help design one.
Termite mounds in Africa catch the wind as it blows past, drawing hot air from the main chambers and venting it through flues on the top and sides.
The termites block and open tunnels to control the flow, creating a completely passive cooling system.
It’s this system that inspired architect Mick Pearce when he was designing the Eastgate Centre, a mall and office building in Harare, Zimbabwe.
It resulted in a building that used passive and energy-efficient climate control, rather than expensive and polluting air conditioning.
If termites are designing your buildings, why shouldn’t mold design your infrastructure?
Researchers in Japan thought it might just be able to.
They used slime mold, which grows from a single point in search of food, connecting the sources it finds along the way with tubes.
The team placed food in different parts of a petri dish to represent cities around Tokyo and let the mold loose.
It quickly connected the ‘cities’ in a way that was very similar to the actual railway system around Tokyo.
It suggested that this moldy method could be used to rapidly map out the most efficient routes when building infrastructure, reducing its impact.
Despite their enormous size, humpback whales are remarkably agile in the water.
The marine mammals can reach 14 to 17 meters in length and weigh up to 40 tonnes, but they glide through the oceans with minimal resistance.
This is thanks to their unique flippers, which have large, irregular bumps across the leading edge.
These bumps, called tubercles, have been found to improve aerodynamics and are now being tested on turbine blades to boost the efficiency of wind energy.
Birds are in decline around the world.
In North America, for example, there has been a nearly 30-percent decrease in bird populations since 1970 – or a loss of 2.9 million birds.
While there are many causes, a 2017 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report found that the second-biggest killer of birds in the U.S. was glass windows.
Enter: spiders.
Some spiders use UV-reflective strands in their webs. These strands attract insects while stopping birds, which can see the strands, flying into and destroying the webs.
Designers applied this idea to windows, adding a patterned UV-reflective coating to make the glass visible to birds while staying virtually transparent to people.
This aims to minimize the risk of bird strikes on buildings and help their numbers recover.
LED bulbs are incredibly efficient compared to their incandescent ancestors, but they still only convert about half of their power into light. The rest is lost as heat.
To maximize efficiency, LEDs have microstructures on their surface that allow light to escape and limit the amount that is reflected inwards and lost.
In most LEDs, these microstructures are symmetrical.
Hoping to improve LED efficiency, researchers turned to fireflies. These bioluminescent bugs also use microstructures to maximize their light, but theirs are asymmetrical.
Researchers applied this lopsided design to LEDs and found that by using asymmetrical pyramids, light extraction efficiency increased to around 90 percent.
Greater efficiency means less power, and a cleaner, greener future.
While fireflies are probably the more palatable example, scientists also saw the same structures in cockroaches.
One of the famous sights of Japan is the flash of a bullet train across the countryside.
Officially called Shinkansen, these trains shuttle millions of passengers at speeds reaching 320 km/h.
But when they were first introduced, they had a major problem: their speed caused pressure to build in front of the train, leading to a loud boom when exiting tunnels.
To make them more streamlined, designers looked towards the kingfisher.
Seeing how these birds sliced into the water without making a splash, the train designers rebuilt the engine’s front end to mimic a kingfisher’s beak.
Not only did this stop the problem of tunnel booms, it also allowed the trains to travel 10
percent faster while using 15 percent less energy.
These six examples are just a few of the designs that biomimicry has brought us, focused on improving efficiency and protecting nature.
There are plenty more out there for all manner of tasks, from shark-skin swimsuits to lotus flower paint.
Not all these nature-driven designs will lead to large-scale change, but the wild world continues to inspire people around the globe every day.
Share your nature-inspired designs with us on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky using #ThinkLandscape.
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