DECODING technological challenges into functional terms DISCOVERING similar functional abilities in Nature ABSTRACTING natural design principles APPLYING design principles to generate innovation EVALUATING design concepts according to sustainability and other criteria BIO-INSPIRED PROCESS

Abstracting design principles helps us transfer ideas from the natural world to the world of technological innovation.

"The tiny bird's nest fungus produces a little saucer in which nestle a few small 'eggs'. The clutch size varies from a couple to eight or ten. Each is a small capsule filled with spores and each is attached to the saucer by a thin filament. The saucer is so shaped that if a heavy raindrop falls in it, water droplets are deflected up around the sides, detaching the capsules and projecting them for a distance of up to six feet. Their attaching threads unwind behind them and finally break. They have a sticky end so that as the capsule shoots through surrounding vegetation, the filament catches on a leaf or a stem and the capsule hangs there. Then when conditions are just right, it releases its spores." (Attenborough 1995: )

Impact into concave shape distributes contents broadly.

"Grazing has perhaps elicited the most dramatic dental specializations in mammals. About twenty million years ago, grasses and grasslands appeared on earth. Grass (and, incidentally, wood) provides poor fodder. It yields little energy relative to its mass, so a grazer has to process huge volumes. Much of that energy comes as chemically inert cellulose, which mammals hydrolyze only by enlisting symbiotic microorganisms in rumen or intestine. It's full of abrasive stuff like silicon dioxide and has lengthwise fibers that demand cross-wise chewing rather than rapid tearing. Long-lived grazers, concomitantly, have especially special teeth, with their components typically layered side by side... This odd-looking arrangement ensures that, while teeth may wear down…they won't wear smooth. The harder material (enamel, most particularly) will continue to protrude as the softer materials (cementum and dentine) wear down between them." (Vogel 2003:333)

“Beetles in the Cyphochilus genus achieve their striking white coloration not through chemical pigments, but through a disordered tangle of 250 nm-diameter filaments in their scales. The fibers are sparsely packed with just the right number of voids, giving rise to a thorough scattering of light that causes the brilliant whiteness. The secret is not in the material itself, but the structure—the way the meshwork of fibers and voids scatters the light. Unlike colors, which can be created by using highly ordered structures to scatter light, white is created by a random, simultaneous scattering of light.”

“The V formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds, particularly over long migratory routes. All the birds except the first fly in the upwash from the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead. The upwash assists each bird in supporting its own weight in flight, in the same way a glider can climb or maintain height indefinitely in rising air. In a V formation of 25 members, each bird can achieve a reduction of induced drag by up to 65% and as a result increase their range by 71%. The birds flying at the tips and at the front are rotated in a timely cyclical fashion to spread flight fatigue equally among the flock members.”

“Unlike wings of other birds, most owl species’ wings are serrated on the leading edge. The serrations give the owl a better ability to control airflow, therefore allowing owl to fly faster and to reduce noise…Nature’s solution for owls is having… several tips (serrations) on their wings, therefore creating several microturbulences instead of one strong turbulence, therefore the noise heard is much less.”

If electricity is passed through soil, water tends to migrate from positive to negative poles… Surface potentials on the outer skin of an earthworm arise from the resting and action potentials... It was found that the resting potential of the earthworm was zero with respect to earth, but the skin of the moving part rose to as much as -40mV at the fore part of the worm with respect to earth and to the rest of the worm… In addition to the generation of voltage between the front and rear parts of the worm, it has been found that in various animals which spend much of their time in contact with soil, their skins are ribbed or rough in some way. In each case, surface elements which stick out show a small negative voltage relative to areas in between. The purpose appears to be to cause water to move towards protuberances in order to lubricate them.