Amazing designs of nature (part 1)

On the hot desert, the small lizard, 2cm tall, looked up at Parker frightened like a newborn dinosaur who lost her mother. It seems too cute for this harsh land, yet it is an extremely effective "water vacuum" .

A cloudless summer day in February. Evolutionary biologist Andrew Parker kneels on the hot sand of the outback south of Australia's Alice Springs city and dips the spiny lizard's hind leg into a basin of water.

The land is extremely difficult to live in - there are some of the most venomous snakes in the world, of which 3 m long taipan snakes. The soil itself is wild: The hot wind blows like a hair dryer at the highest speed, the sun appears three times larger in temperate regions. This is the most arid region of the arid continent with people living. Anyone who stays in this place needs to know for sure how to get the next sip.

"Look!" Parker exclaimed. "Its back is wet!" That's right: After half a minute, the water from the lizard's foot basin rises high and is now shining on its spiky skin. A few seconds later the water reached the muzzle, the lizard's jaw began to move: It really was drinking water with its feet. If you give the thorn a little more time, he will perform the same circus on the wet sand.

Parker wanted to know exactly how the lizard did. He was not only motivated by the curiosity of a biologist but also had a specific purpose in mind: wanting to build a device similar to a thorny lizard so that humans could find water, save lives. in the desert.

Parker experimented with pipettes, sprinklers and pigments to know how the lizard gathered and carried the water. "The water flows fast, I can't imagine," he said and dripped a drop of water from the pipet onto the back of the little animal. Water drops disappear like magic. "His skin is more hydrophobic than I thought. There must be capillaries hidden somewhere to bring water to his mouth."

We packed the equipment into a car that ran on all terrain. The lizard looked after. "In order to understand the special adaptation of the first thorny lizard, I have to get used to its natural environment: the nature of sand, shade, lighting conditions," Parker said as they I'm on my way back to the research camp. "Now I'm done with the original work. Next, I'll look at its skin structure through a microscope."

Bird Toucan.(Photo: www.birdwatchersdigest.com )

Effective designs from creatures

British biologist Parker studied at the request of the London Museum of Natural History and University of Sydney. He is one of the leading experts in the Biomimetics industry (Biomimetics): They use nature's design principles to solve problems in engineering, materials, medicine. study and other disciplines. He has studied the brightness of butterfly scales, the beetle of the beetle and the reduced layer of reflection of moth eyes. His research has enabled the development of a brighter mobile screen and led to a so-called anti-forgery method that even the name of any business behind him is not allowed to disclose.

Parker sought suggestions even from the past: In a museum in Warsaw he noticed the tiny trenches in the eyes of a fly wrapped in amber 45 million years ago; they have the effect of reducing reflection. Today photovoltaic cells have the same surface.

Mr. Parker's work is in a growing science industry around the world and is accelerating. Engineers in the United Kingdom and in the United States study bulges on the front of humpback whale fins. Their aim is to design wings that allow aircraft to be more flexible.

In Berlin, finger-feathered feathers on the wings of raptors have suggested to engineers to design aircraft wings that change shape while flying to reduce air resistance and reduce fuel consumption. . In Zimbabwe architects study how termites regulate temperature, humidity and ventilation in their nest to rely on this knowledge to build houses with more amenities. Japanese researchers have made the injection less painful; they attach many tiny teeth to the needle. The mosquito's blood-sucking hose is a model for them.

"Biomimetics gives us a whole new set of methods and ideas," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials researcher Michael Rubner. Biomimetics is based on the older concept of bioengineering (Bionics). Technical births only try to reproduce nature, biological simulations understand the basic principle and improve it according to certain technical requirements.

Immediately after my trip to the Autralia Desert, I met Andrew Parker again, this time in London. I want to continue to learn about his thorny research project. On the way from the entrance to the Natural History Museum to his lab on the 6th floor we passed many large rooms. Everywhere is a creature preserved with enormous diversity: in one room are sea otters, pythons, porcupines and kangaroos in tall glass vases, in a 20-meter-long tub is a giant octopus. Displayed in other spaces are colorful colorful hummingbirds, exotic toucan birds and many other exotic birds. This price on another shelf is filled with iridescent beetles like precious stones.

Broken walnuts: Light design of toucan birds

For Mr. Parker it is not only a collection to watch but also a "treasure of great natural designs . " Each species of organism is a distinctly successful history, the product of optimizing through millions of years of screening. Why do people not learn what evolution has to offer?

Brightness and vivid colors of tropical birds are not caused by pigments but the result of physical laws: Many extremely small structures arranged in a certain order will reflect light. Light has a certain wavelength. Such colors can never fade and be brighter than pigments. Color, cosmetic and credit card manufacturers are very interested in them. The seemingly strange quarry of the toucan bird is a good example of a light structure with high durability: The toucan bird can use it to bite off walnuts without being affected while flying due to gravity. Very light amount.

Hemp of the porcupine is a model for an elastic and economical texture. Spider silk if the relative weight is 5 times stronger than steel but more flexible. Fireflies emit cold light almost without energy loss while a light bulb takes 95% of the energy that produces heat. The Melanophila bug lays eggs on newly burnt wood and to find this wood quickly it has infrared sensors that locate the forest fire many kilometers away. The US Air Force is also interested in this. They want to improve the accuracy of missiles.

Many subtle natural structures include only very simple materials: Keratin is the main component of hair, horns and nails; Calcium carbonate is the substance that makes chalk and limestone. Many amazingly complex structures form from this substance. For example, the abalone shell is also from calcium carbonate. But the result is not a soft chalk, but a 3,000 times more hard shell and a good force like kevlar.

. And this is the secret of the thorny lizard

To understand the nature of such materials or to simulate them, one must consider their structure at a thousandth or a millionth of a millimeter, in the world of micro and nano. And Mr. Parker did this right today with the skin of a thorny lizard from the museum collection. Under the electron microscope he wanted to find a structure whereby the lizard could suck water with its feet and lead it very efficiently.

An expert helped him use electron microscopes. Thanks to the talent of this person, when we looked at the screen, it seemed like we were flying through the skin of the thorny lizard as if an exploration spacecraft was flying around a strange planet. In the middle of a thorn is some strange nodules. The more they are arranged in rows, the smaller they get. Finally we sank into a crack at the bottom of the thorn and saw many hollows that looked like honeycomb, each of which had a diameter of 25 micrometers.

"Ah," Parker exclaimed like Sherlock Holmes had found evidence. "It's obviously a super hydrophobic surface." The study of thorny lizard skin through cutting-edge computer scanners confirms his hypothesis: Many tiny capillary tubes between scales are placed to guide water to the lizard's muzzle. "Discovered the secret of the thorny lizard , " he said. "Now it is possible to design it according to it."

Together, Parker, Cohen and Rubner (two American colleagues) came close to their destination, a new type of water collection device. Although there is a great impression on this biological structure, for them, nature is just a starting point for innovation.

(There's more)