Bio means life; Mimicry means imitate; so biomimicry is the practice of imitating life.

It looks to nature to provide inspiration and direction to sustainably

solve our most pressing challenges. It is innovation inspired by nature.

Human beings are clever. We've created city's, economies and whole societies

but at the same time and without meaning to

we've also created massive sustainability challenges for future generations

and ourselves. Biomimicry is a way to address these problems by creating

policies, products and processes that are adapted to life on Earth. The idea goes like this...

Plants, animals and microbes are amazing. They have spent billions of years

engineering and testing ways to thrive on the planet.

Three point eight billion years to be precise. That's a lot of research and development!

After all this R&D, what did not work does not exist anymore and what surrounds us

has learned to survive. Solutions to challenges large and small are all around us.

We just need to look. Here are two examples:

Sustainable energy provision is a massive sustainability challenge. The race is on

to find economically viable sustainable energy solutions. Biomimicry asks

"what could we learn from nature that could help us produce sustainable energy or make more

efficient the current alternative technologies that are already out there?"

Seemingly large and unwieldy humpback whales display surprising agility in the water.

This is due mainly to their flippers which have large irregular bumps

called "tubercules" across their leading edges. Inspired by these flippers, a company

called WhalePower has developed turbine blades with bumps called tubercules

on the leading edge. These blades promise greater efficiency in many applications

from wind turbines to hydroelectric turbines,

to irrigation pumps, to ventilation fans. In fact, using these blades to catch wind

could provide up to 20% increased efficiency, making this type of

alternative energy competitive with other energy sources.

Thank you humpback whales! Here is another example of Biomimicry in action.

The Shinkansen bullet train is one of the fastest trains in the world. Offering high-speed

travel between several of Japan's metropolitan areas, it used to travel

over 200 miles per hour.

But every time the train emerged from a tunnel, air pressure changes made a

sonic boom like a large thunderclap causing people one quarter mile away

who lived along the train line to complain.

Japan has strict noise pollution laws so this had to be solved.

The train's chief engineer was a dedicated birdwatcher.

He asked himself: "is there something in nature that travels quickly

and smoothly between two different mediums?"

The Kingfisher dives from the air into water to catch fish and produces almost no splash at all

compared to similar sized birds or animals. Modelling the front end of the train

after the beak of Kingfishers resulted in a quieter train,

one that uses 15 percent less electricity while traveling 10 percent faster.

By emulating nature, the bullet train designers were able to solve

an important problem.

Imagine what other problems might be solved by turning to the world around us and asking...

what would nature do?

Check out biomimicry.org and asknature.org to learn more about

this exciting practice of innovation inspired by nature

as well as stories and examples.

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