When faced with engineering difficulties, such as lifting a load or coping with extremes of heat, up to 70 per cent of man-made technologies manipulate energy, often increasing the amount used, in order to resolve the problem.

However, new research which has compared how nature and man-made technologies overcome similar problems has shown that only 5 per cent of natural 'machines' rely on energy in the same way.

Instead, insects, plants, birds and mammals rely on the structure and organisation of their body parts and behaviour; the solutions to problems are already built in.

"An example might be a hammer," said Professor Julian Vincent from the University of Bath who led the research .

"A man-made hammer has a very heavy head, so that it is heavy to carry around and lift but can do a lot of work with one hit. It relies on inertia.

"But the woodpecker's hammer, its head, relies on speed. It is very light to carry around, and functions rather like a whip, with the heavier body moving a small amount, and the lighter head, on its long neck, moving much faster.

"They can each deliver the same amount of impact energy, but they do it in a very different way."

Although mankind has looked to nature for inspiration for generations, 'biomimetic' devices are a relatively recent phenomenon. The stable wing in aeroplanes, Velcro and self-cleaning paint are all simple devices based on natural inspiration.

The Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies at the University of Bath is helping extend this principle to more advanced engineering challenges.

Researchers are currently looking at the desert cockroach (to develop a new kind of dehumidifier technology), insect sense organs (
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Contact: Andrew McLaughlin
a.mclaughlin@bath.ac.uk
44-122-538-6883
University of Bath
9-May-2006