
Even as animals and plants face widespread extinction from human-driven factors like climate change, the natural world continues to inspire scientific discovery in unexpected ways.
“Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years optimizing elegant solutions to extremely complex problems,” said University of California, Irvine, biomedical engineer Alon Gorodetsky in the United States.
“So, if we look at nature, we can skip our development process and get an important solution right away.”
From squid skin food warmers to a lubricant made from cow mucus, here’s a selection of last year’s science-inspired creations.
> Okra plasters
Stopping the bleeding hearts and livers of dogs and rabbits without stitches can now be done with a biodegradable plaster made of sticky okra gel.
Okra is a fuzzy green vegetable with a slimy texture that inspired Malcolm Xing from Canada’s University of Manitoba to turn it into a medical adhesive.
“Okra is a wonderful material,” he said.
In the study published in July (2022) in the journal Health Care Materialsresearchers discovered that pureeing okra in a juicer and then drying it into a powder creates an effective bioadhesive that quickly creates a physical barrier and initiates the blood clotting process.
The researchers plan to test this plaster on humans in the coming years.
> Cow mucus lubricant
Snot can evoke feelings of disgust, but laboratory tests have found that a lubricant made from cow mucus shows promise in preventing the spread of some sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
The study, published in the journal Advanced Science last September (2022), very preliminary, though.
It has not been tested on humans and should not replace other forms of protection, such as condoms.
The researchers took mucus from the salivary glands of cows and turned it into a gel that binds and inhibits viruses.
Mucus is made of a protein called mucin that may have antiviral properties.
It is also a solid and a liquid.
“As a solid, it can trap bacteria or viruses in the body.
“As a liquid, it can remove pathogens from the body,” said study co-author Yan Hongji from Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
> Robot firefly
Fireflies that light up the night sky have inspired scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US to build small, bug-sized robots that emit light when they fly.
Glowing artificial muscles help the honey bee-sized robots communicate with each other, making them useful for future search and rescue missions.
Although robots can only operate in a laboratory environment so far, researchers are excited about their potential future applications.
> Cancer sniffing ants
There are an estimated 20 quadrillion ants in the world, and researchers have discovered that one species can smell human breast cancer.
In a study conducted at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University in France, and published on the preprint server bioRxiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, scientists used a sugar-water reward to train ants to smell the difference between in the urine of mice implanted with, and without, human tumors.
While dogs can be trained to use their super noses to detect cancer, it is expensive and time consuming.
Ants may provide a cheaper – though less cute – alternative.
ALSO READ: This insect can be trained to smell cancer
> Squid skin tea cosies
The strange skin of squids has inspired a packaging material that can keep coffee and food warm for as long, or as little, as desired, according to a study published in March (2022) in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Squids have small organs called chromatophores that change their size, and also color.
To mimic “these pigment-rich organs”, co-author of the study Gorodetsky says they developed “small metal islands that you can separate” and contract.
The level of heat can then be controlled by how much the material is stretched.
“If you put it on something warm, for example a cup full of coffee or a hot sandwich, you can control the rate at which it cools,” he said.
“Nature is the epitome of innovation and engineering,” Gorodetsky added. – AFP Relaxnews