Why Engineers Study Nature's Climbers

"Researchers studying other creatures to learn how they do the extraordinary things they do are finding that it's not as simple as it looks."

That's an interesting statement because it is so true. We don't really understand or comprehend a minute amount of what we observe in nature. The Designer was fantastic in what He, God, made and we can learn much from even the "simple" things of nature. The human body, the intricacies in animals and nature are astounding.

Engineering:

Stealing Natures patents for the past 8,000+ years.

(We try to be clever and work things out with the math, but Nature has a beautiful and flawless method of finding things that work. Brute force testing of EVERYTHING, things that work get tweaked a little and tried again, things that don't work are dropped by the wayside. Rinse and repeat for a few billion years, and what you have left are a collection of closely-related solutions that are all 'good enough.' It's also proof that Nature chooses 'Good' and 'Cheap' as the two goals from the "Good, Cheap, Fast. Pick two" maxim.

I gave you a GA on that. Nature has done an incredible job by using trial and error ad nauseam, and if some want to refer to that as 'God', so be it.

BUT, there are many devices that engineers have developed that, to my knowledge, nature has not. Start with the wheel and axle, on up to all kinds of metallurgy, and essentially all of electronics.

Wheel and axle: the flagelum of some single-celled organisims, not so much a wheel as a whip, but it has not only an axle, but a motor as well. For the wheel, just look at any log or rock rolling downhill, or tumbling along a riverbed. 'Roundish' is pretty easy to find in nature.

Metalurgy: Heating metals up (stars, planetary magma) banging metals together (collisions in space, plate tectonics) combining metals to make new alloys (see banging metals together. also stars, which go BEYOND alloys into making new ELEMENTAL METALS out of the lighter ones)

Electronics: Moving electrons around. (Universe, since it cooled down enough to allow electrons to exist)

There is nothing we can do that hasn't been done before. We just think of clever ways to control or manipulate it into something useful to us. You want to filter out contaminants, or extract single molecules from a mixed 'slurry?' Look inward, my student, at your own kidneys, a marvel of filtration technology. Want to create a massive surface area within a fixed volume? Breathe deep in contemplation, now think of where that air went, into your lungs.

That's why I referred to it as 'stealing patents,' we take the basic tech, and put it together with other basic tech and make something new.

In a documentary, I heard Richard Attenborough mention that the tip of a certain wasps ovipositor is composed of zinc. It pierces the head of the host to lay eggs. We had to go through wood, bone and stone to get there.