What inventions have humans inspired from animals and plants?

There are many topics on this topic. For example, ultrasonic waves were discovered from bats;

Dragonfly-airplane; wind ear-telephone; frog-rapid scanning system

Fly - Smell Detector Mantis - Sickle Egg - Building

Scientists studied the secrets (mì) of bat (biān) bat (fú) flight, got inspiration from it, and invented radar. It can be said that bats are human teachers.

In fact, bats are not the only creatures in nature that can serve as human “teachers”?

Human beings have wanted to fly into the sky like birds since ancient times. Scientists carefully studied the principles of bird flight and finally invented the airplane in 1903. Thirty years later, due to the continuous increase in the speed of radios, the wing (yì) often broke due to violent vibration, causing tragic (cǎn) disasters (huò) of aircraft crashes and fatalities. It took a long, long time before humans found a way to prevent such accidents. In fact, Dragonfly has already solved this problem. It turns out that at the end of each dragonfly's wing, there is a thick spot that is slightly heavier than the surrounding area. This is the key to preventing the wings from trembling. If we had known this earlier, scientists could have spent less energy! Now, aircraft designers have learned this lesson, paid attention to the flying methods of flies, mosquitoes, bees, etc., and created many new aircraft with various excellent performances.

In the past, ships sailing in the sea, although they had pointed heads, could not sail very fast. But whales with big, round heads often overtake ocean ships easily. What's the reason? Scientists have carefully studied the whale and found that its shape is an extremely ideal "streamline body", and the "streamline body" encounters the least resistance in the water. Later, engineers imitated the shape of a whale and improved the design of the hull, greatly increasing the speed of the ship.

A person holds an egg and squeezes it hard, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot break the egg. How can a thin egg shell be so strong? Scientists studied this problem with great interest, and finally discovered that the reason why the thin eggshell can withstand such a large pressure is because it can evenly distribute the pressure to all parts of the eggshell. Based on the characteristics of this "thin shell structure", architects have designed many buildings that are both lightweight and material-saving. The roofs of the Great Hall of the People, Beijing Railway Station and many other famous buildings all have this kind of "thin shell structure".

Fly Eye Camera

Bat Radar

Dolphin Sonar

Bird Plane

Insect Hydraulic Device< /p>

Snake Infrared

Fish Submarine

Spider Synthetic Fiber

Turtle Armored Vehicle

Cat Eye Night Vision

In addition, people imitated kangaroos to create jumping off-road vehicles, and imitated certain shells to create tanks with strong shells...

Human inventions - inspiration from animals Boats and Submarines come from imitations of fish and dolphins. Scientists made the world's first gas masks based on the unique ability of the fire boar's nose to detect poison. The rocket takes off using the recoil principle of jellyfish and cuttlefish. By studying the color-changing ability of chameleons, scientific researchers have developed a lot of military camouflage equipment for the troops. Scientists studied frog eyes and invented electronic frog eyes. The U.S. Air Force researched and developed a miniature thermal sensor through the Viper's "heat eye" function. Humans also designed the toad ram (hang) using the principle of leaping frog. Humans imitate the highly sensitive sense of smell of police dogs to create "electronic police dogs" for detection.

Bionic and high-tech Modern radar, a radio positioning and ranging device: Scientists have discovered that the bat devil relies not on its eyes, but on an echolocation system composed of its mouth, throat and ears. Because the bat demon emits ultrasonic waves when flying, and can detect the ultrasonic waves reflected back from obstacles. Based on this, scientists designed modern radar - a radio positioning and ranging device... Through research on the low swimming resistance of dolphins, scientists invented artificial dolphin skin that can increase the speed of torpedoes; and a wheelless device that imitates the movement of kangaroos in the desert. Cars (jumping machines), etc.

Inspired by King Penguin, scientists from the Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the former Soviet Union designed a new type of car - the "King Penguin" brand polar off-road vehicle. The wide bottom of this kind of car is directly attached to the snow surface, and it is propelled forward by the wheel scoop, and the driving speed can reach 50 kilometers per hour.

Scientists imitated insects to create space robots.

A research team at the Australian National University has developed a small navigation and flight control device through research on several insects. This device could be used to equip small aircraft for Mars exploration.

Inspired by bionics, British scientists are developing a submarine that can "swim" in an S-shape by swinging its tail fin. The main innovation of the new submarine is the use of what is called an "elephant trunk actuator" " device. The "trunk" consists of a set of flexible tubes made of thin, flexible material that mimic muscle activity to propel the fin's movement. This new submarine can serve as an underwater minesweeper, used to deal with mines that can detonate at the slightest sound or disturbance.

Butterflies

The colorful butterflies are brightly colored, such as the double-moon swallowtail butterfly, the brown-veined monarch butterfly, etc., especially the fluorescent-winged swallowtail butterfly, whose rear wings sometimes appear in the sun. Golden, sometimes emerald green, sometimes purple to blue. Scientists have brought great benefits to military defense through research on butterfly colors. During World War II, the German army surrounded Leningrad and attempted to destroy its military targets and other defenses with bombers. Based on people's lack of understanding of camouflage at the time, Soviet entomologist Schwanvich proposed using the colors of butterflies to be difficult to detect among flowers and covering military facilities with butterfly-pattern camouflage. Therefore, despite the German army's efforts, the military base in Leningrad remained intact, laying a solid foundation for the final victory. Based on the same principle, people later produced camouflage uniforms, which greatly reduced casualties in battles.

The continuous changes in the position of artificial satellites in space can cause sudden changes in temperature. Sometimes the temperature difference can be as high as two or three hundred degrees, seriously affecting the normal operation of many instruments. Inspired by the fact that the scales on butterflies automatically change angles to adjust body temperature according to the direction of sunlight, scientists designed the satellite's temperature control system into a blind style with leaves that radiate from both sides and have very different heat dissipation capabilities. A temperature-sensitive metal wire is installed at the rotating position, and the opening and closing of the window can be adjusted as the temperature changes, thus maintaining a constant temperature inside the satellite and solving a major problem in the aerospace industry.

Beetles

When beetles defend themselves, they can spray "cannonballs" of high-temperature liquid with a foul odor to confuse, stimulate and frighten enemies. After dissecting it, scientists found that there were three chambers in the beetle's body, which respectively stored dihydric phenol solution, hydrogen peroxide and biological enzymes. Dihydric phenol and hydrogen peroxide flow into the third chamber and mix with biological enzymes to cause a chemical reaction, which instantly turns into 100°C venom and is quickly ejected. This principle is currently used in military technology. During World War II, in order to meet the needs of the war, the German Nazis used this mechanism to create a new type of engine with extremely powerful power and safe and reliable performance. It was installed on the flying missile to make it fly faster, safer and more stable, and improve the hit rate. London, England, suffered heavy losses when it was bombed. U.S. military experts developed an advanced binary weapon inspired by the beetle jet principle. This kind of weapon packs two or more chemical substances that can produce poisons into two separate containers. After the shell is fired, the diaphragm ruptures, and the two poison intermediates mix and occur within 8-10 seconds of the missile's flight. Reaction, generating deadly poison to kill the enemy the moment it reaches the target. They are easy to produce, store, transport, safe and not prone to failure. Fireflies can directly convert chemical energy into light energy with a conversion efficiency of 100%, while the luminous efficiency of ordinary electric lamps is only 6%. The cold light source made by imitating the luminous principle of fireflies can increase the luminous efficiency by more than ten times, greatly saving energy. In addition, an air-to-ground speedometer developed based on the beetle's optokinetic response mechanism has been successfully used in the aviation industry.

Dragonfly

Dragonflies can generate local unstable airflow that is different from the surrounding atmosphere through wing vibration, and use the vortices generated by the airflow to make themselves rise. Dragonflies can soar with very little thrust. They can not only fly forward, but also backward and left and right. Their forward flying speed can reach 72 kilometers per hour. In addition, the flight behavior of dragonflies is simple, relying only on two pairs of wings to flap continuously. Scientists successfully developed a helicopter based on this structural basis. When an airplane flies at high speed, it often causes violent vibrations, and sometimes even breaks the wings and causes an airplane crash. The dragonfly relied on its weighted wings to fly safely at high speeds, so people followed the dragonfly and added counterweights to the wings of the aircraft to solve the thorny problem of vibration caused by high-speed flight.

In order to study the aerodynamics of gliding flight and collision as well as the efficiency of its flight, a four-blade driven, remotely leveled controlled airfoil (wing) model was developed and tested in a wind tunnel for the first time Various flight parameters were tested within.

The second model attempts to install a wing that flies at a faster frequency, reaching a speed of 18 vibrations per second. What is distinctive is that this model uses a device that can adjust the difference between the two pairs of wings at the front and rear.

The center and long-term goal of the research is to study the performance of aircraft driven by "wings" and compare the efficiency with traditional propeller-driven aircraft.

Flies

What is special about the house fly is its rapid flight technique, which makes it difficult for humans to catch it. It is difficult to access it even from behind it. It envisions every situation, takes great care, and moves quickly. So, how does it do it?

Entomologists have discovered that the fly's hind wings degenerate into a pair of balancing rods. When it flies, the balance rod vibrates mechanically at a certain frequency, which can adjust the movement direction of the wings and is a navigator to keep the fly's body balanced. Based on this principle, scientists have developed a new generation of navigator - a vibration gyroscope, which has greatly improved the flight performance of the aircraft. It can automatically stop the dangerous roll flight and automatically restore the balance when the aircraft body tilts strongly, even if the aircraft is tilted. Even the most complex sharp turns are foolproof. The compound eye of a fly contains 4,000 single eyes that can image independently and can see objects within almost 360 degrees.

Inspired by the fly's eye, people made a fly-eye camera composed of 1329 small lenses that can take 1329 high-resolution photos at a time. It is widely used in military, medicine, aviation, and aerospace. Flies have a particularly sensitive sense of smell and can quickly analyze dozens of odors and respond instantly. Based on the structure of the fly's olfactory organ, scientists convert various chemical reactions into electrical pulses to create a very sensitive small gas analyzer. It has been widely used in spacecrafts, submarines, mines and other places to detect gas components. The safety factor of scientific research and production is more accurate and reliable.

Bees

The honeycomb is composed of neatly arranged hexagonal prism-shaped small cells. The bottom of each small cell is composed of 3 identical rhombuses. These structures are similar to those of modern mathematicians. It was accurately calculated that the obtuse angle of the rhombus is 109○28' and the acute angle is 70○32', which is exactly the same. It is the most material-saving structure, has large capacity and is extremely strong, which has amazed many experts. People imitate its structure and use various materials to make honeycomb sandwich structural panels. It is strong, light in weight, and difficult to conduct sound and heat. It is an ideal material for construction and manufacturing of space shuttles, spacecrafts, artificial satellites, etc. Each single eye of a bee's compound eye is adjacently arranged with polarizers that are very sensitive to the direction of polarized light and can use the sun to accurately position. Based on this principle, scientists have successfully developed a polarized light navigator, which is widely used in navigation.

Flies, fireflies, electric fish, jellyfish, see details below.

Fifth: Octopus's sucker~

Bionics is a special ability to imitate living things, using the structural and functional principles of living things to develop machinery or various new technologies. . According to legend, Lu Ban, a famous craftsman in ancient my country, cut his hand on the grass when he went up the mountain to cut down trees. He felt strange, how could a small piece of grass be so powerful? After careful observation, he found that the edges of the silk grass leaves had many sharp teeth. So Lu Ban invented the saw for woodworking. It is speculated that the invention of ancient wooden boats was inspired by the swimming of fish. In the process of inventing airplanes, people also learned a lot of useful knowledge from the flight of insects and birds.

Now, scientists are looking for enlightenment and answers in the biological world with many scientific problems such as orientation, navigation, detection, energy conversion, information processing, biosynthesis, structural mechanics and fluid mechanics.

Flies and spaceships

The annoying flies seem to have nothing to do with the grand aerospace industry, but bionics has closely linked them.

Flies are notorious as "stinky hunters", and they can be found in any smelly and dirty place. Flies have a particularly sensitive sense of smell and can detect odors thousands of meters away. But a fly does not have a "nose", so how does it rely on its sense of smell? It turns out that the fly's "nose" - olfactory receptors are distributed on a pair of antennae on the head.

Each "nose" has only one "nostril" connected to the outside world, which contains hundreds of olfactory nerve cells. If an odor enters the "nostrils", these nerves immediately convert the odor stimulation into nerve electrical impulses and send them to the brain. The brain can distinguish different odor substances based on the differences in the nerve electrical impulses generated by different odor substances. Therefore, the fly's antennae act like a sensitive gas analyzer.

Bionics scientists were inspired by this and successfully copied a very peculiar small gas analyzer based on the structure and function of the fly's olfactory organ. The "probe" of this instrument is not a metal but a live fly. It is to insert very thin microelectrodes into the olfactory nerves of flies, and amplify the electrical nerve signals guided by electronic circuits and send them to the analyzer; once the analyzer detects the signal of odorous substances, it can sound an alarm. This instrument has been installed in the cockpit of the spacecraft to detect the composition of the gas inside the cabin.

This small gas analyzer can also measure harmful gases in submarines and mines. Using this principle, it can also be used to improve the input device of the computer and the structural principles of the gas chromatography analyzer.

From fireflies to artificial cold light

Since humans invented the electric light, life has become much more convenient and rich. However, electric lamps can only convert a small part of the electrical energy into visible light, and most of the rest is wasted in the form of heat energy, and the heat rays of electric lamps are harmful to human eyes. So, is there a light source that only emits light but does not generate heat? Human beings have turned their attention to nature again.

In nature, there are many organisms that can emit light, such as bacteria, fungi, worms, mollusks, crustaceans, insects and fish, etc., and the light emitted by these animals does not produce heat, so it is Known as "cold light".

Among the many luminous animals, fireflies are one of them. There are about 1,500 species of fireflies. The colors of the cold light they emit range from yellow-green to orange, and the brightness of the light also varies. The cold light emitted by fireflies not only has high luminous efficiency, but also the cold light emitted is generally very soft, which is very suitable for human eyes, and the light intensity is relatively high. Therefore, biolight is an ideal light for humans.

Scientists have discovered that fireflies’ light emitters are located on their abdomens. This light emitter consists of three parts: a luminescent layer, a transparent layer and a reflective layer. The luminescent layer contains thousands of luminescent cells, all of which contain luciferin and luciferase. Under the action of luciferase, luciferin combines with oxygen to emit fluorescence with the participation of intracellular water.

The glow of fireflies is essentially the process of converting chemical energy into light energy.

As early as the 1940s, people created fluorescent lamps based on research on fireflies, which brought about great changes in human lighting sources. In recent years, scientists first isolated pure luciferin from the light emitters of fireflies, then isolated luciferase, and then used chemical methods to artificially synthesize luciferin. A biological light source mixed with luciferin, luciferase, ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and water can be used as a flashlight in mines filled with explosive gas. Since this kind of light has no power source and does not generate a magnetic field, it can be used to clear magnetic mines under the illumination of biological light sources.

Now, people can obtain cold light similar to biological light by mixing certain chemical substances, which can be used as safety lighting.

Electric fish and volt batteries

There are many creatures in nature that can produce electricity, and there are more than 500 species of fish alone. People refer to these fish that can discharge electricity as "electric fish".

Various electric fish have different discharge abilities. The ones with the strongest discharge ability are electric rays, electric catfish and electric eels. A medium-sized electric ray can produce about 70 volts, while the African electric ray can produce up to 220 volts; the African electric catfish can produce 350 volts; the electric eel can produce 500 volts, and there is a South American electric eel. It can produce voltages up to 880 volts, making it the electric shock champion. It is said that it can kill large animals like horses.

What is the secret of electric fish discharge? After anatomical research on electric fish, it was finally discovered that there is a strange power-generating organ in the body of electric fish. These generators are made of many translucent disk-shaped cells called electroplates or electrodisks. Because there are different types of electric fish, the shape, location, and number of electric panels of the generator are different. The electric eel's generator is prismatic and is located in the muscles on both sides of the tail spine; the electric ray's generator is shaped like a flat kidney, arranged on both sides of the body's midline, with a total of 2 million electric plates; the electric catfish's generator Originating from some kind of gland, located between the skin and muscles, there are about 5 million electrical plates. The voltage generated by a single electric plate is very weak, but because there are many electric plates, the voltage generated is very large.

The extraordinary ability of electric fish has aroused great interest among people. In the early 19th century, Italian physicist Volta designed the world's earliest voltaic battery using the electric fish's power-generating organ as a model. Because this battery is designed based on the natural generator of electric fish, it is called an "artificial electric organ." Research on electric fish has also given people this revelation: If the power-generating organ of electric fish can be successfully imitated, then the power problems of ships and submarines can be well solved.

Jellyfish's Wind-Earing

"Swallows fly low to clear the rain, and cicadas chirp in the middle of the rain and the sky clears up." There is a certain relationship between the behavior of living things and changes in the weather. Coastal fishermen all know that when fish and jellyfish living on the coast swim to the sea in groups, it indicates that a storm is coming.

Jellyfish, also called jellyfish, is an ancient coelenterate that floated in the ocean as early as 500 million years ago. This lower animal has the instinct to predict storms. Whenever a storm approaches, it swims to the sea for refuge.

It turns out that in the blue ocean, infrasound waves (frequency 8-13 times per second) generated by the friction between air and waves are always a prelude to the coming storm. This kind of infrasound cannot be heard by human ears, but small jellyfish are very sensitive. Bionicists discovered that there is a thin handle in the vibrating cavity of the jellyfish's ear. There is a small ball on the handle. There is a small hearing stone inside the ball. When the infrasound wave before the storm hits the hearing stone in the jellyfish's ear, At this time, the listening stone stimulates nerve receptors on the wall of the ball, so the jellyfish hears the rumble of the approaching storm.

Bionics scientists modeled the structure and function of jellyfish ears to design a jellyfish ear storm predictor, which accurately simulates the jellyfish's organ that senses infrasound waves. This instrument is installed on the front deck of the ship. When it receives the infrasound waves of the storm, it can cause the horn that rotates 360° to stop rotating on its own. The direction it points is the direction of the storm; the reading on the indicator is Can tell you the intensity of the storm. This kind of predictor can predict storms 15 hours in advance, which is of great significance to the safety of navigation and fisheries.