Nature can do a lot to help humans

A FARMING friend doesn’t rely solely on weather forecasts any more. Instead, he observes the behaviour of his animals.

If his cows are reluctant to leave the shed, for instance, he knows cold weather is on the way.

And, unlike professional meteorologists, the animals always get it right, he is convinced. All of which leads to the question: ought we to be taking far more notice of nature and the world around us?

Now is the time for Ireland to study nature’s best ideas and then imitate them to help solve human problems, according to the American biomimicry expert, Dr Dayna Baumeister, who is urging people to look at nature in a new way.

Need we go any further than the wondrous construction of something as basic as a bird’s nest and all that involves — not least insulation.

The gist of what Dr Baumeister believes is that rather than just exploiting nature, we should learn from it and use it as a model for problem resolution.

Over the last 3.8 billion years, nature has managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet, or mortgaging the future. Nature has simply learned what works and what lasts.

The term ‘biomimicry’ is not very familiar, but we are likely to be hearing it much more in the years ahead. In simple language, it means imitating life.

Dr Baumeister delivered a lecture at recent event hosted, in Dublin, by the Heritage Council. Essentially, she said the world at large had ignored nature as a teacher, not considering its potential to inform and educate us on creating sustainable products and ways of doing things.

But, as our natural world faces increasing threats, it is surely time for us to recognise what we can learn from nature, rather than just extract from it.

Heritage Council chief executive Michael Starrett said the biomimicry discipline challenged Irish people to think differently about nature and our relationship with it. Doing it nature’s way has the potential to change the way we grow food, make materials, harness energy, heal ourselves, store information, and conduct business.

The Heritage Council has a responsibility to protect our natural heritage. Saying no to unsustainable development is not enough anymore; we have to look for more positive solutions, he went on.

Copying nature has, for example, led to the making of fibres stronger than steel by closely studying what spiders do, or making solar cells that imitate the way leaves turn sunshine into energy.

A point clearly made at the lecture was that nature is millions of years ahead of us and has already solved the problems we are trying to tackle. Engineers, designers and inventors are being urged to ask themselves a fundamental question: what would nature do here? The Shinkansen bullet train, run by the West Japan Railway Company, is the fastest train in the world with a speed 322 km/h. But, people started to complain about noise when air pressure changes created large thunder claps every time the train emerged from a tunnel.

The train’s chief engineer then modelled the front of the train in the shape of a kingfisher’s beak. These birds dive from high in the air into water, creating very little splash. The change in the train’s design resulted not only in far less noise, but 15% less electricity use, even while the train travels 10% faster.

Everyone is familiar with birds crashing into windows, something that is estimated to kill 250,000 birds in Europe each day. A German company has designed a type of glass that appears almost transparent to humans but is clearly visible to birds.

The inspiration came from studies of ultraviolet silk strands used by spiders in their webs to protect them against birds. What this amounts to is that nature and countless species that have survived and evolved over millions of years have devised their own form of research and development.

Their very existence today proves that their R&D has worked handsomely and provides a template for far less advanced human beings. Nature is way ahead of us and can show us what to do if we only stop, look and take note. Perhaps, a bit of humility is needed on our part, but we can be the big beneficiaries.