In 2019, we are at the peak level of human technology. Everything we create is better than anything we have made before it, and because of this, people assume that there is nothing we can learn from the natural world. After all, humans are the dominant species on the planet, meaning we are the smartest, which must mean that there is nothing nature can teach us, right?

WRONG!

There is in fact so much we can learn from nature, we are unable to fully understand it! There are so many things that nature does better than us, it is impossible to think of where to start a proper list! After all, life has occurred on the planet for 3.6 BILLION years, while humans have only been in controlling fire for at most 1.5 million years. To give a better idea of how long that is, 1 million seconds is around 1.5 days while 1 billion seconds is around 31 years. So yeah. A LOT longer.

So when you think about it that way, evolution has had a ridiculous amount more time to develop. Which is why humans have taken the design of a lot of things in nature, and used them for ourselves! This process is called biomimicry, and is incredibly cool when you think about it! Some famous examples are the beak of  Kingfisher being the design style for the bullet trains of Japan, termite towers to help build skyscrapers, the bumps on whale tails to help us build efficient wind turbines, sending signals underwater from dolphins, and so many more!

If you want to read more about this, head on over to The Biomimicry Institutes website and read about all of these examples and more!