Dig in: When imitation of nature becomes the mother of invention

The next time you pause to momentarily adjust those knacky Velcro fasteners on your child’s shoes, or your raincoat, or your wetsuit, consider the fact that their design is the result of biomimicry, where a product or innovation is directly inspired by nature.

In the case of Velcro, the popular fastening product consisting of two nylon strips – one of tiny hooks, the other of tiny loops – its design was inspired by a hunting trip in the alps made by a Swiss engineer by the name of George de Mestral. On his return home, Mestral noticed that the bristly seed-heads of the common wild plant known as burdock (Arctium) had fastened themselves firmly onto his clothing, as well as to the fur of his dog. Intrigued, the engineer placed one under a microscope to examine it. Under such close magnification, the reason for the seedheads’ ability to adhere so tenaciously to fabrics or to hair became crystal clear; each one was covered with hundreds of tiny hooked bracts.

From the point of view of nature – the ultimate engineer – this is an ingenious method of making sure that the seeds of the plant get dispersed as widely as possible, ensuring its reproduction. But Mestral saw other interesting possibilities, realising that those same hooked bracts would make the perfect fastening system if placed against a fabric made of similarly tiny loops. It took him 10 years to create the product now known worldwide as Velcro, a design that Mestral succeeded in patenting and which led to his posthumous induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He died in 1990, a very wealthy man.

The design of Velcro is just one of many examples of successful biomimicry, where plants have provided the direct inspiration for ingenious man-made designs. Others include the pomelo tree, a member of the citrus family native to Asia.

Its fruit is covered with a remarkably tough outer skin that allows it to fall from great heights without cracking, inspiring engineers to create a hybrid metal with similar properties.

Yet another is the self-cleaning leaf of the lotus flower, which has a strange ability to repel dirt, so that it always looks pristine. Examining one under a powerful electron microscope, German botanist Professor Wilhelm Barthlott found that the surface of each leaf is covered with countless tiny protrusions that prevent dust from adhering to it.

Known as the lotus effect, this has subsequently inspired countless man-made designs, including self-cleaning glass and an eco-friendly house paint with similar self-cleaning properties, all of it proving, once again, that nature has so much to teach us. See biomimicry.org