Biomimetics: How Lessons from Nature can Transform Technology

by Brian Clegg

An exploration of the transformative ways in which nature has inspired the technological advancement of humankind.


Biomimetics literally means emulating biology – and in a broader sense the term covers technological advances where the original inspiration came from nature. The Earth is a vast laboratory where the mechanisms of natural selection have enabled evolutionary solutions to be developed to a wide range of problems.


In this new title in the Hot Science series, science writer Brian Clegg looks at how humans have piggybacked on natural experimentation, redeploying a solution to create things that make our lives easier. He looks at how the hooks on burdock seeds inspired the creation of Velcro, how the stickiness of the feet of geckos and frogs has been used to create gripping surfaces, such as tyre treads, and how even the most basic optical enhancement in the form of spectacles is itself a form of biomimetics.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Audiobook, Stem, Animals

176 pages, Paperback

Published July 20, 2023

About the author

Brian's latest books, Ten Billion Tomorrows and How Many Moons does the Earth Have are now available to pre-order. He has written a range of other science titles, including the bestselling Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Build Your Own Time Machine and Dice World.

Along with appearances at the Royal Institution in London he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare. It has since been widely applied to problem solving and decision making in business.

Brian has also written regular columns, features and reviews for numerous publications, including Nature, The Guardian, PC Week, Computer Weekly, Personal Computer World, The Observer, Innovative Leader, Professional Manager, BBC History, Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. His books have been translated into many languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Thai and even Indonesian.

Reviews

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Natur ist das größte Vorbild für menschliche Erfindungen und Errungenschaften. Von Velcro bis Bienenbau Strukturen. Die Natur gibt es vor. Denn die Natur hat durch die Evolution, die besten A/B Tests gemacht. Wie sich das die Menschen zu nutze machen, wird in diesem Buch erklärt. Dabei wird oberflächig in die Tiefe gegangen. Warum können Geckos Wände hochklettern, wie sieht die Struktur ihrer Gliedmaßen aus und wie kann man sich diese zu Nutze machen? Könnten wir auch Wände auf die Weise hochklettern oder gibts einen anderen praktischen Nutzen dafür?
Das Buch ist sehr interessant aber für meinen Geschmack viel zu kurz mit den gerade mal 150 Seiten.

[Drishti Wali · Rating 2 out of 5]

initially I was a bit annoyed with the writing style and the author's bias on biomimetics influence on science and engineering but reading the chapter on AI and how much he got wrong has turned me strongly away from the author's and his books

[Konrad Walter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unbelievably shallow.

[Andrew Serra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly talks about what has been made using nature as inspiration. It’s good but more like an overview of what’s been done.

[Verity Halliday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biomimetics is a well-written and entertaining short read about how the world of biology has influenced and inspired human technologies.

I already knew that Velcro fasteners were inspired by burdock seeds sticking to animal fur, but there were many other examples of how the natural world can help develop human inventions. Mostly these inventions turn out to be expensive to implement or to have a limited application, but biology is still often a great jumping off point for us to use our natural innovation skills to improve our world.

A recommended read for the curious.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up on audio on a whim because it was on sale. At first, I thought it was going to be too simplified. There was something about the tone of the writing in chapter 1 and it starts with the story about how Velcro was invented, which I’ve read in other books. However the conclusion circles back to Velcro in a way that establishes a strong reason to start with it. And the book gets more complex—at times going over my head. But it was interesting.

Clegg explores the topic of biomimetics, a science I hadn’t heard of before. It’s about how different technology has been inspired by nature. He writes about a lot of inventions I’d never heard of. A bacteria that can live in cement to self-heal cracks that may occur. Artificial silk that mimics spider silk that is fine and strong with the potential to replace Kevlar due to spider silk being both strong and stretchy. Gecko tape which is inspired by the lizard’s ability to climb smooth surfaces. A dress made of fabric inspired by the iridescent properties of butterfly wings. A building that uses video screens to mimic the scenery on one side on the other to make it almost invisible, inspired by a fish that detects the ocean floor and camouflages on top to blend in. A concept car inspired by the shape of a box fish.

I admit that as I was driving while listening, I sometimes lost focus and this is a book that requires focus, particularly for the nonscience-minded like me. The language can sometimes get quite complex. But I did find it interesting and worthwhile.

[Reinis · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a review article than a full-fledged book about biomimetics

Going into this book, I was not expecting much of in-depth information about biomimetics and the field in general, but I was also expecting it to be a bit more than a collection of some loosely nature inspired engineering feats. This seems more of a topic that the author was interested in, did some limited research into, and wrote a report about his findings. And even then, as the author admits, the connection with biomimetics or nature inspired approaches in the applications is often spurious. As with any review of current technology, this will not age very well as the time goes by, and the final chapter about autonomous driving methods is already quite outdated at the time of publishing. (Quick note: it is not that AD planners cannot account for low probability scenarios, because they do, and they plan for them. It is that they cannot yet imagine new scenarios that have never happened, though even this is arguable with advances of GANs and GAILs).

Some may find the ideas and examples in this book very interesting, and that is great. Brian Clegg has a vast amount of interests and presents them very well. But there just was not enough substance here for me.

[Scott Lupo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book about the history and, hopefully, future technology inspired by nature. Biomimetics is in some ways copying nature with the thought that nature already has the answer. The absolutely main example is Velcro. However, that is not the message of this book. Evolution (aka, nature) doesn't always have the best or most efficient answers. Evolution only allows certain traits to be passed to future generations based on whether that trait is advantageous to that organism at that moment in time. The author goes through many examples of companies attempting to create products just like nature. The author suggests that the real process should be about taking inspiration from nature and then using human creativity to come up with products and solutions. Agreed. A ton of the book is about products that just have not made it commercially for whatever reasons. Maybe AI will put biomimetics into overdrive and we will start seeing products and resources that were specifically inspired by nature. Go Velcro!

[Rahil Shah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads as a Substack article for a chill Sunday evening. You will walk away slightly inspired to be more watchful and conscious of your surroundings, and some interesting trivia to sound cool; but no extra-ordinary takeaways as the author leaves you as confused as him as to whether something is truly biomimetic or not.

[Teigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book! Super interesting especially about seed dispersel! It's crazy how much we take from nature and learn from animals plants!

[Imogen Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting

[sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ 🎧

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insights but not a lot of good examples. A lot of anecdotal comments.

[April Dalby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had echolocation, oh wait I do I can hear :D