ABSTRACT
The Biomimicry Institute says that biomimicry is "an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature's time-tested patterns and strategies." Many everyday examples of this are technological. One is the swimming costume modelled on sharkskin that proved so successful at the 2008 Beijing Olympics; so successful, in fact, that it was subsequently banned from competition. There are other examples, as web searches will illustrate. All these are undoubtedly valuable, but none is likely to make a substantive contribution to what the Biomimicry Institute says is needed: sustainable solutions to human challenges. For these, one may have to look to basic scientific research. The institute's blog sent a message to the world leaders meeting at COP21 in Paris in December 2015, saying that if one need solutions, one should "ask nature." They then listed "a few of nature's strategies and corresponding innovations that can lead us down a more life-sustaining path.".
