Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

Biomimicry is the quest for innovation inspired by nature. Biomimics are scientists and inventors who study nature's greatest achievements - spider silk and tallgrass, seashells and brain cells, photosynthesis and forests - and adapt them for human use. Their findings are revolutionizing how we invent, compute, heal ourselves, harness energy, repair the environment, conduct business, and feed the world. In Biomimicry, science writer Janine M. Benyus names and explains this phenomenon that has been unfolding in all the science disciplines. She takes us into the lab and out into the field with the maverick thinkers who are stirring vats of proteins to unleash their signaling power in computers...analyzing how spiders manufacture a waterproof fiber five times stronger than steel...watching electrons zip and pop in a leaf cell, converting simple sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second...discovering miracle drugs by noting what chimps eat when they're sick...studying the hardy prairie as a low-maintenance model for agriculture...and much more.