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Imagine a database that collects thousands of nature’s secrets and makes it available for all to access. An open source of trade secrets that everyone can tap into and further develop for their use.  This is possible only if thousands of researchers can contribute towards this effort and are willing to share.  AskNature (sponsored by AutoDesk), is creating this very venue for individuals and groups to contribute @ www.asknature.org, Please take the time to browse through this site, I have included a few examples from the site that were uploaded by researchers.  I have only spent a few minutes looking through and I have already seen the potential of this site.

Snakes survive cold winters in part by using underground dens, the depth of which are linked to the prevailing winter temperatures.
“Snakes, meanwhile, choose to conceal themselves during the winter months in underground dens (hibernacula). The depth of these dens is directly linked to the level to which the environmental temperature usually falls at this time of year – as is the length of the snakes’ period of torpor. Snakes will often congregate in great numbers at this time to help to conserve as much of their body heat as they can. They will even share their hibernacula with other poikilotherms, such as lizards, tortoises, and toads.” (Shuker 2001:109)

The nests of Vespa hornets are made out of a paper substance produced from the mixture of saliva with wood pulp.
“The powerful mandibles of the hornet are…used to cut and chew wood to make its nest. Wood pulp is mixed with saliva and converted by the hornet into a paper substance from which an elaborate tiered nest is made which may house thousands of individuals.” (Foy and Oxford Scientific Films 1982:159)

The mud nest of the white-winged chough is a sturdy home high in the trees, built using a jiggled-mud construction technique.
“Closely related to the magpie lark are two other Australian birds of the open forest, the apostle bird and white-winged chough. They build substantially larger nests, weighing up to five pounds, located as much as fifty feet above the ground. But even these scaled-up versions of the adobe cup with their inch-thick walls are manufactured with the same jiggled-mud strategy that seems to be universal among birds that build with wet earth. But then vibration is a key feature in the insertion of twigs and grasses into conventional nests, so this may be a bit of behavioral recycling.” (Gould and Gould 2007:185)

The nests of organ-pipe wasps are long sturdy tubes built from strands of mud in a herringbone pattern.
“The inch-long female begins at the top with a ball of wet mud and applies it to the vertical surface, stretching it out into ropes braided into a herringbone pattern, creating a ^ built in two steps: first the /, working from bottom to top, then the \, again beginning at the bottom and joining its mirror image at the top.” (Gould and Gould 2007:14)

The woven nest of the penduline tit is strong and virtually predator-proof because of its extremely tight weave.
“The woven nests of the penduline titmouse (Remizidae) are so strong and densely woven that even apes cannot tear them apart; they are used as purses by the Masai in Kenya and as children’s slippers in Eastern Europe.” (Pallasmaa 1995:42)

The larvae of ant lions capture prey by building sand pits with the steepest possible slope.
“In fact, the biological use of complex materials transcends the normal world of viscoelasticity and shear-dependent solid-fluid transitions. A totally different kind of yield underlies the operation of the pit of a larval ant lion. An unbound pile of solid particles will form a slope no steeper than some ‘angle of repose,’ a phenomenon of great interest to both highway engineers and designers of automatic parts for feeding and packaging equipment. Lucas (1982) shows that the ant lion carefully maintains the greatest possible slope. The addition of a wandering ant then precipitates a miniature avalanche, with a large and efficient set of jaws barely buried at the bottom of the pit.” (Vogel 2003:363-364)

About: What is AskNature?

Imagine 3.8 billion years of design brilliance available for free, at the moment of creation, to any sustainability innovator in the world.

Imagine nature’s most elegant ideas organized by design and engineering function, so you can enter “filter salt from water” and see how mangroves, penguins, and shorebirds desalinate without fossil fuels.

Now imagine you can meet the people who have studied these organisms, and together you can create the next great bio-inspired solution.

That’s the idea behind AskNature, the online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. Think of it as your home habitat—whether you’re a biologist who wants to share what you know about an amazing organism, or a designer, architect, engineer, or chemist looking for planet-friendly solutions. AskNature is where biology and design cross-pollinate, so bio-inspired breakthroughs can be born.

Thanks to our sponsors, AskNature is a free, open source project, built by the community and for the community. Our goal is to connect innovative minds with life’s best ideas, and in the process, inspire technologies that create conditions conducive to life. To accomplish this, we’re doing something that has never been done—organizing the world’s biological literature by function.

What you’ll see on the site today is a starter culture of ideas—biological blueprints and strategies, bio-inspired products and design sketches, and biomimics you can talk to and collaborate with. Over the next few months, this genetic pool of ideas will grow as we receive natural history information from our partner, Encyclopedia of Life. Our social web will also grow, beginning with tapping into thousands of solution seekers who are part of the Wiser Earth global network.

Luckily, we live on a wildly diverse planet surrounded by genius, and now there’s one site where you can celebrate, learn from, and even conserve that genius. So please, come meet your mentors, get involved, and be part of the design revolution inspired by nature.

~Janine Benyus
Co-Founder/Board President
The Biomimicry Institute

2008 – Nov. 21 Press Release
How To Build a Sustainable World: AskNature.org

Biomimicry Institute, Autodesk Announce World’s First Database of Nature-Inspired Design Strategies

Boston, Mass. — Imagine if buildings were as self-sufficient as living organisms: if they could gather water, filter air, and adapt to local climate conditions. Imagine if the natural world could teach us everything we need to know about sustainable, efficient design.

Now for the first time, a new online database called AskNature.org will bring nature’s best design ideas to design tables around the world. The new project, created by the Biomimicry Institute and sponsored by Autodesk, was announced on Nov. 21 at the Greenbuild 2008 conference in Boston.

AskNature.org is a free, public-domain online library of nature’s best design ideas, organized by function and explained with illustrations and in language relevant to designers. Architects, designers and innovators can use this resource to study life’s approaches to sustainable design—for example, how butterflies create pigment-free color, or how plants split water to release hydrogen.

“The core idea is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has already found the solutions to the sustainability challenges humans face,” said Janine Benyus, founder of the non-profit Biomimicry Institute and author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

AskNature.org—part search engine, part social network—is a place where biologists and innovators can meet, exchange information and design together.  The site also has a feature called “Thank a Genius,” which encourages the investment of a portion of profits derived from bio-inspired innovations to go toward preserving the organisms and ecosystems that inspired the breakthrough.

AskNature.org is sponsored by Autodesk, a world leader in design innovation technology. With a user base of 9 million architects, designers and engineers around the world, Autodesk sees biomimicry as a revolutionary design concept that can help influence better design decisions.

A growing number of businesses are using biomimicry to solve their design challenges. As one example, the architectural firm HOK is planning a community development in India that seeks to mimic tree roots with its foundation structure, as a way to deal with soil stability problems. They are also designing roofs that shed water during monsoon season and also store water for use in the drought season—just like trees do in that environment.
Biomimicry at Greenbuild 2008

The science of biology and the practice of biomimicry were a central theme at the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2008 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, which brought 25,000 people to Boston this week. Janine Benyus, along with renowned Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, presented the closing keynote address at the conference on Nov.  21 to announce the launch of AskNature.org. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life is integrated with the AskNature.org database.

For more information about the Biomimicry Institute: www.biomimicryinstitute.org.

For more information about Autodesk’s role: www.autodesk.com/biomimicry

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