Prabhupada, Mayapura, September 30, 1974: […] Every animal has got a special qualification. Just like you’ll find the lizard, a very plain wall, polished wall, but they’ll go very swiftly. You have no science to do that. You cannot do it. The vulture, it goes very high. They have got very small eyes, but they can see from miles away where is some dead body. That is their business.
So everyone has got some special qualification. That is God’s gift. Full Lecture
“Geckos do not use any type of glue or adhesive to walk up walls. This is possible because millions of tiny hairs on the gecko foot adhere to the wall through Van Der Waals forces, which are basically small attractions between molecules that are close together. “
“Our Earthly Classroom”
Robert Deyes: […] The manner in which a gecko’s foot allows it to climb glass, the way in which the wings of a butterfly sparkle in the sunlight and the complex methods of flight used by insects have all inspired technologists to emulate nature.
Just as attractive for ‘bioinspirationalists’ are the one billion tiny bristly hairs on the sole of a gecko’s foot that help it to stick very efficiently onto surfaces. The underlying secret behind the gecko’s remarkable sticking capabilities is an electrostatic force called ‘Van der Waals’.
So strong is this force that if all the one billion hairs were to be in contact with a surface at any one time, the gecko could hold the weight of a 120 Kg man. Many novel applications for a synthetic equivalent of the gecko’s bristly foot are already being thought of including first aid plasters and insect traps. The ability of the gecko to walk upside down has even inspired one researcher to look at how a similar feat might be achieved by a robot.
Other natural methods of attachment such as the strong ‘DOPA Glue’ used by mussels to stick to rocks and piers may likewise serve as the seeds for man made medical adhesives.
The beauty of nature often stares us in the face luring us to look deeper into the secrets of its designs. Iridescence, the eye-catching display of color that is found on the feathers of peacocks or the wings of butterflies, is caused by the reflection of light at particular wavelengths.
For the butterfly wing there is an intricate cavernous labyrinth on the surface of the wing that generates this effect. This effect bears similarities to the way in which light is transmitted through fiber optic cables. The color changing abilities of animals such as the octopus or brittle stars and the reflective and anti reflective surfaces found in nature are likewise now raising the interest of the military where camouflage is a critical consideration in defense.
We find a similar beauty in the design of natural structures such as shells. The red abalone shell fish, for example, uses fifteen different proteins at different times of the shell biomineralization process to produce a structure of exquisite design.
How may we exploit the designs of nature in our own construction? The cantilever bridge that resembles the structure of animal anatomy, the ‘badgir’ ventilation channels used in houses in Iraq which mirror similar channels in termite mounds, glasshouses that employ the same building principles as those used in the ribbing of water-lilies, geodesic domes that have at their roots the icosehedronal structures of viruses perhaps all reveal the shape of things to come.
The self assembly of a bacterial virus called lambda has likewise inspired some researchers such as Harvard’s George Whitside to develop self assembling nanostructures. Others have taken to generating molecular hybrids by attaching already existing molecular machines, such as the rotating motor of an enzyme called ATP Synthetase, onto solid surfaces.
Forbes’ historical musings on the use of some of these materials are an embellishment to his account. But the underlying message of his story is more profound for it tells of a world that is accessible to learning and creativity by humans. Ours is an earthly classroom seemingly designed for our own learning enjoyment, and displaying an “intrinsic value” which we recognize in our ability to make detailed and accurate scientific observations.
It is not only a world that has highly improbable properties but also the kind of world that, as astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards observe, “an intelligent agent would have some interest in designing” (see Footnote).
Footnote: This quote taken from Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards (2004), The Privileged Planet, How Our Place In The Cosmos Is Designed For Discovery, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington D.C, New York, pp. 306-307
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