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I thought this was interesting. Anyone here into biomimetics that has additional examples they can share? (see link for full article)
Bell Labs scientists find novel optical fibers in deep-sea sponges
Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have found that a deep-sea sponge contains optical fiber that is remarkably similar to the optical fiber found in today's state-of-the-art telecommunications networks. The deep-sea sponge's glass fiber, which developed through the course of evolution, may possesses certain technological advantages over industrial optical fiber, the scientists report in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal Nature.
The study of biomimetics at Bell Labs is part of the quest to find better materials for technology and industry, and has proved remarkably fruitful. Two years ago, Aizenberg and her collaborators made the surprising discovery that thousands of chalk-like calcite crystals spread throughout the exoskeletons of brittlestars, starfish-like marine invertebrates, collectively form an unusual kind of compound eye for the animals. The brittlestar's calcite microlenses expertly compensate for birefringence and spherical aberration, two common types of distortions in lenses. This led the Bell Labs scientists to attempt to mimic nature's success and design crystals based on the brittlestar model, with the ultimate goal of building complex arrays of microlenses similar to the brittlestar's own lenses.
http://www1.bell-labs.com/news/2003/august/sponge.html
Bell Labs scientists find novel optical fibers in deep-sea sponges
Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have found that a deep-sea sponge contains optical fiber that is remarkably similar to the optical fiber found in today's state-of-the-art telecommunications networks. The deep-sea sponge's glass fiber, which developed through the course of evolution, may possesses certain technological advantages over industrial optical fiber, the scientists report in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal Nature.
The study of biomimetics at Bell Labs is part of the quest to find better materials for technology and industry, and has proved remarkably fruitful. Two years ago, Aizenberg and her collaborators made the surprising discovery that thousands of chalk-like calcite crystals spread throughout the exoskeletons of brittlestars, starfish-like marine invertebrates, collectively form an unusual kind of compound eye for the animals. The brittlestar's calcite microlenses expertly compensate for birefringence and spherical aberration, two common types of distortions in lenses. This led the Bell Labs scientists to attempt to mimic nature's success and design crystals based on the brittlestar model, with the ultimate goal of building complex arrays of microlenses similar to the brittlestar's own lenses.
http://www1.bell-labs.com/news/2003/august/sponge.html
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. I think that plants and “lower” organisms are much more interesting on that field, because they don’t use the brains like animals or specifically mammals for some simple or complicated actions; they more use great engineering and physics (e.g. if you’re hungry you’ll just run to food execute algorithm waste lot’s of energy and take a lot of it, if it’s storm, execute storm.cpp run to the cave, if you want to reproduce catch your mate, compile, build and execute sex.cpp, and that’s it….but if you’re a plant or a sponge it won't work that way).