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Inventors Find Inspiration in Natural Phenomena
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Biomimicry is also gaining traction as researchers seek to cut the costs of solar cells and make them less rigid. Two companies -- Konarka Technologies in Lowell, Mass., and Dyesol in New South Wales, Australia -- have developed thin, dye-sensitized solar cells that operate on the same principle that plants use to absorb the sun's rays and convert them to energy. These cells are not as efficient as their photovoltaic counterparts, but they are 60 percent cheaper and more flexible.
Including architectural projects, Pauli said, the 100 largest biomimicry products have generated more than $1.5 billion over the past four years. "The market potential is vast," he said.
Other entrepreneurs are experimenting with genetic engineering to create products, such as putting the genes from a spider into a cloned goat to produce a particularly strong form of silk, but Benyus draws a distinction between that sort of invention and her line of work.
"That's not biomimicry," she said. "That's bio-assisted technology."
The payoffs from biomimicry research, she said, provide a strong incentive for conserving plants and animals rather than exploiting nature in destructive ways. "Preserving their habitats is really preserving the wellspring of ideas for the next industrial revolution, that gets us there with the minimum amount of energy, the minimum amount of toxins," she said.
That line of argument encourages environmentalists such as Patrick Ramage, director of the global whale program at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. If inventors can model pacemakers on whales' circulation or wind turbine blades on the flipper of a humpback whale, he said, that will bolster efforts to protect the animals.
Ramage said that humans are grappling with questions such as "What can we learn from these masterpieces of nature? What secrets do they hold that can help us build a better world for ourselves and for them, for animals and people? In the end, our fates and futures as humans and wild animals are not separate; they are inextricably linked."
