30 Man-Made Innovations That Were Designed Mimicking Nature's Blueprints

Every day, hundreds of birds die from flying into glass windows. This doesn’t just affect birds but also poses a risk to property owners. To reduce such accidents, a company called Ornilux created bird-safe glass. They imitated the strands of a spider web, which are visible to birds, unlike the case with transparent glass. The bird-safe glass features crisscross UV patterns.

Is the termite a pest or a muse? It depends on who you ask. While many people view termites as unwanted houseguests, at least one architect is looking to the ingenious self-cooling designs of termite mounds for inspiration. Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce observed a termite mound on a golf course and noted its shape and ventilation seemed ideally suited to the environment. He incorporated the termite mound design into buildings in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Melbourne, Australia. In each structure, cool air near the ground is channeled upward and hot air at the top of the building is emitted through chimneys.

Unlike whales, beavers don’t have layers of blubber to keep them warm when they dive into chilly water. Instead, their thick fur traps air among the individual hairs, keeping the mammals warm and dry. In 2016, a team of engineers at MIT sought to mimic this quality in a wetsuit covered with rubber “hairs,” specifically designed for watersports athletes like surfers. Just like beavers, the athletes would be kept warm by air trapped on the exterior of the suit.

Humpback Whales are one of the largest weighing animals of the world, yet they are profound swimmers, which attributes down to its flippers (fins). They have warty ridges on the front edge of their fins, called tubercles, reasoning to its swimming speed and its ability to change direction instantly.

A Scientist named Frank Fish noted this peculiarity and concepted the idea to the wind turbine blades and resulted out with increase in speed of the blade and maneuverability of the blade to the wind direction, generating more power.

A firm called WhalePower also scrutinized this and is delivering blades inspired by Humpback Whales’ fins. They account that this proceeded to improve safety, performance of airplanes, fans and more, besides thickening efficiency.

Gecko toes have the unique ability to adhere to most surfaces, including smooth glass. In 2014, a team at Stanford University scaled up the sticky structures found in tokay gecko toes to create a gecko-inspired climbing device. A human test subject was able to “walk” up a glass wall by wearing adhesive pads on his hands and feet.

If you’re afraid of getting your annual flu shot, you might take comfort in a super-tiny needle inspired by the anatomy of the mosquito. The insect's proboscis can quickly penetrate its target’s skin, often without the subject even knowing it’s there (an anesthetic substance in their saliva also helps make their bite less painful). This ability was the inspiration for creating microneedles designed to minimize pain.

While both solar panels and plant leaves harvest energy from the sun, a team at Princeton University took biomimicry in solar panels a step further by adding folds to solar cells. The folds mimic the natural creases found in leaves, channeling more light into the cell. The researchers claimed in 2015 that the leaf-like cells generated 47 percent more electricity than those without folds.

Lotus plants are known for their aquatic beauty and as a symbol of longevity in some cultures, but you probably didn’t know that they’re also superhydrophobic. The surface of the lotus plant’s leaves repels dirt and water so well that this self-cleaning quality was dubbed the “lotus effect” in 1977.
In 1999, the German building company Sto released an outdoor paint called Lotusan. When dried, the paint’s microtexture mimics the surface of the lotus leaf to repel moisture and dirt from exteriors.

The Shinkansen Bullet Train in Japan is known for its aerodynamic shape that decreases the amount of sound the train makes while entering and exiting tunnels at speeds of 150 to 200 mph. The trains were modeled on the long, narrow beak of the kingfisher, a bird that hunts fish by diving into bodies of water with little to no splash. The shape of the train also allows it to travel 10 percent faster with about 15 percent less electricity.

In recent years, swimmers have broken one record after another. This is very much the result of improved swim suits, and one of the leading manufacturers of swimwear has found inspiration for its fastest swim suit – Speedo Fastskin – by studying the skin of sharks. "There are ten scales per millimetre on the skin surface of a shark, and they work a bit like the indentations on a golf ball," explains Lenau. "The scales make lots of micro-turbulences where water whirls around close to the body surface and reduces the drag effect of the outer layers of water around the body." "This is what is exploited by Speedo Fastskin. By imitating the micro-structuring of the shark's skin surface, it gives the swim suit a lower drag effect and allows the athletes to move faster through the water." The same principle can also be applied to ships. German company Vosschemie produces a hull paint called Haifischhaut, which reduces the drag effect and allows ships to glide more easily through the water.

Composed of over 40,000 muscles, elephant trunks are as nimble as human hands, able to pick apples from a branch or rip an entire tree out of the ground. Their versatile design has also inspired a robotic arm. The German company Festo has developed the Bionic Handling Assistant, an appendage that can be used to alter handling technology for human-machine cooperation.Wielding four metallic claws, the robot learns just like a human baby would—through trial and error. By continually reaching for and grabbing objects, it works out which muscles to move. The robot is able to memorize changes in its position through adjustments in pressure within the tubes that feed its artificial muscles.Made of polyamide, this structural material is strong enough to lift heavy weights yet agile enough to perform delicate procedures, such as picking up an egg. The trunk proves to be a benefit for factories, laboratories, and hospitals, where it provides additional handling for human-directed projects.

The albatross is a majestic, ocean-faring bird that truly soars, meaning it rarely flaps its wings to fly. Instead, it uses the wind to fly more than 600 miles a day. Researchers at MIT are using this flight design to develop drones. They’re hoping to create a fixed-wing, wind-propelled drone that would be able to fly overseas without stopping.

Fireflies help make LED light bulbs more efficient. The bugs' lanterns have microstructures, or asymmetrical microscopic projections, that release light. Researchers from Penn State found that adding microstructures to the surface of LEDs, which typically have symmetrical projections, allows more light to escape, making them more efficient and improving light extraction by 90 percent.

Camels make the list again! Bridgestone is developing a special type of tire that mimics the two-lobed toes of camels. The tire, which was introduced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, is comprised of two lobes of braided steel and is designed to be able to easily trek over hills of fine-grained, abrasive lunar dust. Tests in a simulated lunar environments will soon confirm whether camels will be just as helpful on the moon as they are on Earth.

Pit vipers can detect their prey in complete darkness using specialized sensory organs that perceive infrared radiation. This ability inspired the development of thermal imaging cameras.

Camels live in the driest climates on earth, and yet they’re somehow able to function with limited water resources. So scientists have taken a hint. Camels conserve water by cooling exhaled air during the night, extracting water vapor from the exhaled air, and absorbing and holding onto water molecules from the surrounding air.

Researchers in the Sahara Desert are using the same technique to remove salt from saltwater to irrigate plants by using cool ground water to evaporate warm sea water, which is then condensed in a salt-free form.

Venous leg ulcers in humans is a kind of an ulcer, due to abnormal vein function in the legs. The common causes for the disease include blood clots, injury, inheritance, ageing, lack of physical activity and obesity. Medical officials suggest compression therapy for diagnosis; the idea being stolen from Giraffe.

Giraffe is one of the tallest animals in the world, which also means their blood has to circulate a lot of area through long legs. To clear it up, the distance between a giraffe’s heart and feet is twice that of humans. And they also have smaller calf muscles, no moving toes and minimal ankle joint movement. Yet, they don’t suffer from edema due to it’s extremely tough, fibrous and non-elastic skin. The skin of giraffe creates a rigid sleeve that optimizes the venous return.
Scientists derived this aspect into the medical field as compression therapy for the cure of the same.

These underwater mollusks have inspired scientists to make one of the strongest adhesives on the market. Researchers have cracked how mussels attach to wet surfaces, and have replicated it into an adhesive for commercial use. They created a biomimetic polymer model that contains proteins with the amino acid DOPA, which provides the glue’s adhesion. In a study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, scientists found that the glue performed 10 times better than other commercial adhesives when used to bond polished aluminum.

The quest for sustainable building materials has led us to nature’s treasure trove of solutions.

From bio-inspired concrete that heals itself like living organisms to biodegradable alternatives that reduce waste, examples of biomimicry in sustainable building materials are reshaping the construction industry.

These innovations not only minimize environmental impact but also enhance the resilience and longevity of our built environment.

X-rays are difficult to work with, which is why the X-ray machines at airports are so bulky. However, scientists are now copying a technique used by lobster eyes to gain better X-ray vision.Instead of refraction, or the bending of light by a lens, lobsters see using reflection. Their eyes are covered in squares, similar to flat mirrors, which reflect light at precise angles to form pictures from any direction.This design proves useful to astronomers, who yearn for telescopes that can focus X-rays from certain areas in space. While an ordinary mirror would only allow X-rays to pass through, the shapes of the lobster’s eyes are used to create arrays of tiny, square, hollow tubes made of lead glass. Curved into eyelike spheres, the material reflects X-rays and is packed into telescopes.These crustaceans have inspired other inventions as well, such as microchips and the Lobster Eye X-ray Imaging Device, a “flashlight” that can see through steel walls 8 centimeters (3 in) thick.When the device sends out a string of low-power X-rays through a wall, a few bounce back off the objects on the other side. These signals are funneled through the tubes and create images just like the lobsters’ eyes do. This invention may prove important in locating stolen or illegal goods.