‘It turns out we can recreate these properties quite easily with materials we already know about,’ says Dr Parker. ‘But we would never have thought of it without the initial ideas we gained from biology.’
‘It’s really an abstraction of good design from nature; design that can be translated to provide answers to some of the biggest problems we face,’ says Professor George Jeronimidis.
Professor David Knight has attempted to mix the raw ingredients combined in the spiders abdomen and spin the resulting solution into fibres to help repair wounds, torn ligaments and even damaged nerves. ‘Spider silk has a whole range of useful properties,’ Professor Knight says. ‘And we’re not too far off replicating some of them.’
‘Our clients give us a problem to solve and we filter through the ocean of biological literature,’ says Benyus. ‘Then we take them through the design process.’ Benyus believes that the future will produce technologies just as reliable as the natural structures that inspired them.
Questions
1. In time, products developed using biomimetics will work as well as their biological originals.
2. Some new technologies have resulted only from phenomena scientists have observed in nature.
3. Solutions to some of the world’s most serious issues may be found in nature.
4. One particular natural substance we know of could have many different applications.