Biomimetics: How Lessons From Nature Can Transform Technology

Written by Brian Clegg

Narrated by Mark Peachey

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.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781004136056

Brian Clegg

Brian Clegg is a popular science writer whose Dice World and A Brief History of Infinity were both longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. He has written for publications including Nature, The Times and BBC Focus.

Reviews for Biomimetics

[Thongbotho Boekel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The correlation between systems that naturally occur and human design is rather interesting due to the fact that nature has been around for so much longer than humanity.
So there’s so many use cases of bio-engineering for us to implement from nature’s design.
Great calm voice as well