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AThe word “biomimicry” comes from the Greek bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate. It describes the practice of studying nature’s designs and borrowing them to solve human problems. Rather than treating the natural world as a warehouse of raw materials, biomimicry treats it as a library of tested solutions, refined over 3.8 billion years of evolution. Its advocates argue that organisms which have survived have, in effect, already passed the most demanding engineering examinations.

BPerhaps the most familiar example began with an irritation. In 1941 the Swiss engineer George de Mestral returned from a walk to find burrs from a burdock plant clinging stubbornly to his clothes and his dog’s fur. Examining them under a microscope, he saw that each burr was covered in tiny hooks that caught on the loops of fabric and hair. It took him several years to reproduce the effect with synthetic materials, but the result, patented in 1955, became the hook-and-loop fastener known as Velcro.

CBiomimicry has also quietened one of the world’s fastest trains. When Japan’s Shinkansen “bullet train” entered tunnels at high speed, it pushed a wall of air ahead of it that produced a loud boom on exit, disturbing residents far away. The engineer Eiji Nakatsu, a keen birdwatcher, recalled how a kingfisher dives into water with barely a splash, thanks to its long, streamlined beak. Redesigning the train’s nose to resemble the beak not only eliminated the noise but also reduced air resistance, cutting electricity use by around 15 per cent and allowing higher speeds.

DBuildings, too, have learned from animals. In Harare, Zimbabwe, the Eastgate Centre keeps cool without conventional air conditioning by imitating the mounds built by termites. These insects maintain a remarkably stable internal temperature by opening and closing a network of vents, allowing warm air to rise and escape while cooler air is drawn in from below. The building uses a similar system of vents and chimneys, and as a result consumes far less energy than comparable offices.

EOther researchers have turned to the sea. The skin of sharks is covered in microscopic tooth-like scales whose grooves discourage the growth of bacteria and reduce drag in water. Engineers have copied this texture to create surfaces for hospitals that resist microbes without chemicals, and the same principle briefly inspired swimsuits so effective that some were later banned from competition.

FYet biomimicry is not a guaranteed shortcut. Nature’s solutions are tuned to particular conditions and scales, and copying them directly does not always work: an aircraft that flapped its wings like a bird would be hopelessly inefficient. The most successful designers therefore extract a principle rather than a shape. As the field matures, its greatest contribution may be less a catalogue of clever gadgets than a change of attitude — an insistence that good design should work with natural systems rather than against them.