Learn FROM Nature: Top 5 examples of innovation inspired by nature
Look no further than your natural surroundings – you might just find the answers you need… 🍄✏️🐠🐍🕸️🌵💧
Surprise, surprise - ReWild is celebrating nature this year … and every year after that. Like you, we well and truly love nature. This month, we’re focusing on what we can learn FROM nature, and not just about it… this is an emerging and inspiring field of biomimicry - innovation inspired by nature… ReWild has walked a long road alongside biomimicry, thanks to Claire Janisch - our ecological angel… a chemical engineer by training, Claire was a mentor of the founders of ReWild Africa and was a world-leading expert in biomimicry.
"At its most practical, biomimicry is a way of seeking sustainable solutions by borrowing life's blueprints, chemical recipes and ecosystem strategies... At its most transformative it brings us into the right relationship with the rest of the natural world, as students learning to be a welcome species on the planet" - Claire Janisch
Claire Janisch - Our ecological angel, who passed on one year ago this week. Still, very much part of the ReWild conversation
How Biomimicry Shows Up in the World
Biomimicry is best explained by real-world outcomes… here are the top 5 examples of nature-inspired innovation:
How Slime Mould Inspired City Planning
“Myxomycete” also commonly known as the slime mould is a unicellular organism that is capable of mapping very complex routes and communicating information for finding its food all without a brain, a nervous system or any of the organs we imagine when we think of these complex tasks. Slime moulds have existed for about a billion years and have evolved to be efficient and adaptive towards their one singular goal of feeding and surviving. So when a group of scientists in Japan placed its favourite food, oat flakes, at various locations corresponding to the major cities in Japan, this creature was able to, within a matter of 5-6 days, map out the complex rail network which took Japanese engineers years to plan and map. This technology, perfected in nature, can really help in traffic mapping in new emerging countries in Africa and Asia and city and housing development planning.
Inspired by: The Slime Mould
📍 Where: Tokyo, Japan
🎯 Innovation/function: Efficient, quick and adaptive city, road, and rail mapping
✏️ Who: Atsushi Tero from Hokkaido University in Japan
How The Fungi Inspired Local Land Restoration And Toxic Waste Cleaning
“That toxic waste looks mighty delicious” - A fungus maybe. We, humans, have created more harmful waste than we are ready to admit and a lot of it is sinking into our land, destroying the soil quality and toxifying the land. Researchers at “Novobiom” have turned the field of bioremediation on its head by locating fungi already in stages of reducing synthetic materials into harmless substituents and selectively breeding them to treat heavily polluted waste. All this can be done locally without hauling the soil to any other location for treatment. If we train fungi to treat the waste that we have already created, it can go a long way to converting our planet to its pre-industrial and agricultural glory.
🍄 Inspired by: Fungi
📍 Where: Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
🎯 Innovation / Function: Bioremediation of concentrated toxic waste (mycoremediation)
✏️ Who: Novobiom
How Mosquito Proboscis Inspired A Less Painful Needle
We humans disagree on almost everything. Still, I think we can all agree on how annoying and pesky the mosquitos can be. They have evolved with us to be extremely efficient and sneaky about sucking our blood and have adopted a variety of tools, both physical and chemical, used to dull our ever-powerful senses. The mosquito's proboscis is made of multiple different needles each with its varied use so that the piercing is not noticeable at all. Researchers in 2008, mimicking the mosquito, developed a 3 prong needle that significantly reduced the pain caused by needle insertion. The methodology is improving and science is getting ever closer to mimicking those pesky bugs in a good way.
Inspired by: Mosquito proboscis
📍 Where: India & Japan
🎯 Innovation/function: Less painful needle
✏️ Who: M K Ramasubramanian, O M Barham and V Swaminathan
How Bacillus Bacteria Inspired A Self-Healing Bio-Concrete
Concrete makes the world go round but, as with anything else in this world, it degrades over time. And with the amount of the stuff that we use, it costs tens of billions of dollars the world over to repair damaged concrete. And that’s every year! But what if we had concrete that heals itself as our own body does? That’s exactly the solution Hendrik Marius Jonkers came up with when he found rock-dwelling, limestone-producing bacillus bacteria. These bacteria lie dormant inside the concrete. Anytime a crack occurs in the material and the bacteria is exposed to moisture and air, it springs back into action and produces limestone! The bacteria has a lifespan of 200 years and can save the world billions of dollars and a lot of time.
Inspired by: Bacillus Bacterium
📍 Where: Netherlands
🎯 Innovation / Function: Self-repairing concrete
✏️ Who: Hendrik Marius Jonkers
How Coral Organisms Inspired Innovative Carbon Sequestering
The cement industry is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. 60% of these emissions are formed during the process of calcination when mostly limestone is mined from queries and treated. Corals in the sea however have been forming very strong and stable materials by actually using CO2 present in water and forming metal carbonates. Scientists at Blue planet have figured out a way to make carbonate aggregates mimicking the corals without having to purify the CO2 from the air. This eliminates the high energy consumed to separate the CO2 from the air and gives a carbon negative byproduct which can be used by the cement industry.
🐠 Inspired by: Coral Organisms
📍 Where: California, USA
🎯 Innovation / Function: Energy-efficient carbon sequestering and useful byproduct
✏️ Who: Blue Planet Systems
See here for more biomimicry examples
So what (really) is biomimicry?
Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.
Biomimicry is generous. Circularity, sustainability, regenerative design — it means that the things we humans make become a force for restoring our soils, the air, water, and wildlife instead of degrading them.
In short, it’s time we learn from nature… and fortunately, Learn Biomimicry is doing just that. ReWild has been a partner since the start, and is constantly looking for ways to help grow biomimicry… if you see any opportunities for biomimicry in your business, career or passion project - reach out to them at accounts@learnbiomimicry.com
Advance your career with nature’s genius. Gain the skills to apply biomimicry to your business, projects, and daily life.
Become a Biomimicry Practitioner (6 months part-time)
Join a bespoke project-based learning journey that expertly guides you to become a confident, practising biomimic. Create nature-inspired innovations to solve real-world problems.
Watch video below (A film by by ReWild):
Become a Biomimicry Educator (6 months part-time)
Integrate biomimicry into your career, courses and life. Purpose-built for Educators, this course will upskill you to facilitate individuals to create nature-inspired innovation and solve real-world problems.
Watch video below (A film by ReWild)
News from ReWild:
Good luck to Ale and Jay who are off to Johannesburg next week to film another BBC Storyworks story! More on this later.
We’ve welcomed the enthusiastic and intelligent Ben Pama to the team, as an assistant Business Developer. Exciting times are to come!
Freelancers: We’re looking for freelancers based around Africa and Europe - if you are a freelancer, or know an exceptional filmmaker, editor, colour or sound designer, then apply to become a FreeWilder here.
Sam Chev has been soaking up some time in Wildtuin - being in the Pilansberg this past week.
Alessandra, our Italian matriarch, hosted a little movie screening last night at the ReWild offices. We sat under the trees with some of our friends as we watched Honeyland. Keep your eyes out for the next screening event!
Wild Regards
The ReWilders