Mother Nature's Design Workshop

abb_road writes "Scientists creating new surveillance and defense technologies are studying the insect world for inspiration. Biomimetic researchers working on devices ranging from 360 degree lenses to mine-disabling robots are using biological principals as the backbone of their work. From the article: 'The tried-and-true designs of many insects are the product of millions of years of evolution. Even so, they are not perfect models. Natural selection isn't just a matter of physiological perfection, but how an organism's traits suit it for a particular environment, scientists say. For this reason, Bandyopadhyay stresses it is important not to just copy nature's work, but to take the best parts of it and apply it elsewhere.'"

Comments

Ants

[KarMax]

I always wondered about ants, a friend compares the Ants with some kind of socialism, because leaving a side the idea of "pawns" or "slaves" everybody work for a cause grater than him/herself. It will be interesting if there are more popular the courses where the Mother Nature (specific insects behaviors) are applied to real world society.

BTW that's just an idea i want to share.

When i was on the Amazonian Jungle (from Peru to Brazil) i saw a LOT of insects (that kind of "bugs" that you only see on movies or books.
It was interesting the behavior of some insects...

The spiders are really BIG, and when we travel on boat at day you can't see any, as soon as the sun starts to hide, the spiders starts to work. Some people kill the spiders (in fact the first time i kill some too) then i realize Watching/analyzing the behavior of the spiders:

They try to stay away from you, but they feel like at night YOU are in his place, so they act overconfident, they build a lot of spiderwebs and the mosquitoes (there is a LOT of mosquitoes in the Jungle and they are BIG) goes directly to the spider.
So i think, well maybe if i leave the spiders alive, they will catch all the mosquitoes, eat well and no one bites me.
At the next day, it works, none bites me. So i start to really analyze that, it seems that the spider knows that the mosquito bit us, so the spiders build webs around us (they can build and unbuild webs really fast) and use us as a carnage.
I feel odd, really odd. I think that i am the one Designing the "model/system".

Also we have some ants-analyzing-days and is annoying how they work you can read a lot about ants, but when you saw/fell them working is amazing.


Its good to "feel" the Mother Nature to learn and "why not?" teach her.