Biomimicry: Plagiarizing Our Way Out of Trouble

Isn't science great? We've come a long way as a species in a relatively short time. Just thinking about our exponential grown and progress as human beings sort of boggles the mind. Just a mere 10,000 years ago we were living in caves, running around in bear skins, picking through the bushes looking for wild berries and spearing Elk with crude projectiles just to stay alive.

Now look at us. We've got computers, high speed trains, cellphones, microwaves, microscopes that can basically see down to the level of atoms, and we even went to the moon a few times. Or so NASA would have us believe. And let's not forget Girls Gone Wild. The true pinnacle of human achievement. The jury still out as to whether or not we did the moon thing. I know some stoners that are pretty sure that's one big conspiracy, man. Life that was once "nasty, brutish, and short", is now longer, less brutish, and sort of less nasty.

But there are tradeoffs between our high tech modernity and our carefree ways living at one with nature. We no longer fear that our young will be devoured by wolves while we sleep. But we've got thermonuclear war to worry about. Polio and Scarlet fever are basically a thing of the past, but we now have American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. I could go on, but you catch my drift. There's always a new problem to deal with. Often times the very technology we invent to solve one problem creates another. If one invention cures on ill, but leads to two more, where does it all end?

Fortunately, we're starting to realize the power of technology at the microscopic level, building smaller and smarter solutions, rather than bigger and dumber ones, to fix our past errors. Here's some examples of what the frack I'm talking about.

One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of biomedical/biochemical/bio anything research is because the possibilities are so endless. Essentially, biomimicry is a new scientific discipline that studies natural organic systems and organisms and how they function and interact to synthesize new methods of improving existing technology or to come up with entirely novel solutions to problems as diverse as power generation, energy efficiency, building and industrial design, etc, etc. Over millions of years of natural selection, organisms fine tune their own survival and coping strategies, weeding out the flawed or ineffective designs, leaving behind the best solutions for any given problem

All we need to do then is poke around the chemical, mechanical, and structural compositions of the plant and animal species to find innovative cures for man made ills. Take aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, for example. This common over the counter headache cure all was originally derived from the bark of the willow tree before being artificially synthesized. We think of modern drugs and medicine as being wholly created in a lab molecule by molecule, but almost all drugs are first discovered in plants and then fine tuned from there.

There are actually quite a few naturally inspired inventions around you that one sees everyday that are examples of biomimcry. Did you have velcro sneakers when you were a kid? Well velcro was actually invented in 1948 by the Swiss scientist George de Mestral, who was frustrated with all the burdocks stuck to his dog's coat. Taking them under a microscope he noticed that burrs are so tenacious due to thousands of miniscule hooks that catch any hair or natural fiber that they come across. From there he simply replicated that basic design with synthetic fibers and voila, velcro.

In that vein, biomaterials deals with such mimicry in designing physical solutions to problems based off of the engineering of various flora and fauna. Example: spider silk. What is it? Silk from spiders. The queston somewhat answers itself. Why do we give two flying figs about spider silk? A few reasons. The tensile strength of this material is roughly three times that of steel. Applications for such a material, were it readily available, are obvious. So why don't we just jar a bunch of spiders and have them make it, or better, synthesize it ourselves? Good question. Answer is: we can't. Not yet. Spider silk, aka gossamer, is extremely ductile (stretchy), strong, useful in a variety of applications, but very difficult to replicate.

The stuff is essentially pleated beta-sheets of alanine and glycine rich protein strands. Since harvesting it from the spiders themselves in industrial quantities is impractical, a company out of Quebec by the name of Nexia Biotechnologies devised a method to use gene splicing to create the same makeup as that of spider silk in the milk of transgenic goats. The silk fibers are then separated from the milk of the goats and spun into a material called Biosteel, with the same desirable attributes as that of the natural spider silk. Strong, biodegradable, ductile, the whole nine. This synthetically created silk can then be used in the medical field for sutures and stitches and what not. Also thanks to its teflon like durability, it may also replace kevlar and other bullet proof materials in body armor for the military or law enforcement, or for criminals that need it for those high intensity drug bust shootouts. The possibilities are endless.

Pretty nifty eh?

The photo below shows a termite/anthill somewhere in Africa, and some building, also in Africa. I'm almost positive its the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, but I have no idea where I got the photo so it's anyones guess. Maybe any hubbers from Africa could help out on that one. The designers of the Eastgate Centre created a building entirely cooled and ventilated without central A/C. They accomplished this by opening and close windows selectively along the height of the structure, drawing in cool air from the bottom and letting out the rising hot air at the top throughout the day.

Their inspiration were these giant anthills on the savanna that need to maintain a constant temperature well above 180 degrees fahrenheit to keep the fungus growing inside from dying. They accomplish this feet by digging holes and covering them up in much the same way the Eastgate Centre manages its natural ventilation system. Ingenious.

Robots are being designed based on the kinesiology of insects, studying their unique movements and methods of locomotion to create the quickest, most effecient 'bots possible. Joint researchers from such institutions as U.C. Berkely, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and other top schools have studied the cockroach in particular for ideas. Anyone familiar with cockroaches knows how manueverable they are. Especially anyone that has seen one of these little buggers fly 20 feet across their living room from the windom sill to their neck. Ughh, I still get nightmares.

The specific morphology of cockroaches allows them to be very good at negotiating variable terrain and switching their direction on a dime. Until we can perfect the T-1000 style human like cyborgs from Terminator, many robots, including nanoscale repair and builder robots, will most likely resemble something you squashed with a shoe earlier this morning.

Thanks to the unique texture and composition of skin of sharks, one day soon your POS car might be far more aerodynamic and therefore more fuel efficient. And all without having to spend a day with Xzibit. A lot of swimmers have been breaking world records lately due to, in no small part, new suits with low drag coefficients that mimic the outer skin of sharks and other aquatic creatures.

A company called SkinzWraps (you can tell the company is "edgy" because they don't give a shit about spelling. rock and roll!) has taken this idea and applied it to the custom car decorations they are known for selling. The car skins, sorry, Skinz, have a dimpled texture, sort of like a golf ball, that improve aerodynamics and add up to savings in gas. The company claims an 18% to 20% improvement in gas mileage from the coverings, which is cut down by gunk and pollen and whatnot filling up the little holes, but returns to normal with a regular wash to clean off the surface. Pretty cool huh? If these do actually improve performance that much, I wouldn't care if Macho Man Randy Savage's ugly mug were plastered across the side of my Civic. I'd be rocking at least a 45 MPG Honda.

So there you have it. Imitating natural processes and designs both in the animal and plant worlds has already inspired quite a few great inventions and innovations, and will no doubt prove to be a continuing source of technological improvement in the future. Rather than come up with an engineering solution from scratch, oftentimes the best way is to step back and look at how evolution has already dealt with the problem.

If I could philosophize for a moment here, I think that Biomimicry is about more than just ripping off the natural world for our own selfish purposes. For me, its about the inevitable realization that we live in a world of finite resources. And that if we want to make the most out of it, we as a species might want to start thinking of ourselves as a part of nature, rather than as a separate entity living outside of it. You know, really thinking about how we affect the integrated ecosystem, and coming up with long term sustainable ways of getting the best out of life without mortgaging the future. Progress doesn't have to be a zero sum game, with the betterment of humankind coming at the expense of planet and the other inhabitants we share it with. Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as a dirty hippy there, but just something to think about.