Many people fear spiders, because they have the reputation of being aggressive animals, only waiting for a chance to kill you. This is of course not true and on the contrary, once you start observing spiders you’ll find they have many fascinating qualities. Especially their highly adaptive silk with one of the toughest fibers not...
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While perhaps far from mainstream science, biological surfaces have received a lot of attention in recent decades, especially by the biomimetic community. In fact, many studies surrounding surfaces have become the prime examples of Bionics/Biomimetics, such as the self-cleaning lotus leaves, the super adhesive gecko pads, etc. In this post, I will be focusing on the...
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Last month (in November), the Joint Global Biomimicry and Bio Inspired Innovation Conference (aka GBC2016) took place in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is the first time this event is organized in Europe. The event gathered people from all over the world for 2 fantastic days of knowledge sharing and networking. If you want to get a...
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If you have watched The Matrix, you would probably agree that the evil Machines (the Sentinels) who hunt down Neo and other humans in the Real World look terrifying yet oddly familiar. That’s because, in my opinion, the creative directors based the Machines off of insects not just for the appearance but also behaviour;...
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I was thrilled to be invited writing about the ice theme, specifically about the polar bears. I have always considered polar bears the epitome of ice warriors (been always fascinated by Pullman’s His Dark Materials’ novels). Millions of years of evolution equipped the polar bear to survive the extremely low winter temperatures in the arctic...
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Insects, bugs, creepy-crawlies. You either love them or hate them, but one thing is for sure – they are everywhere. Throughout their 480 million years of existence, insects have evolved to thrive in almost every niche imaginable, from the extremely hot Saharan desert (e.g., Saharan silver ants), to the wet aquatic environments (e.g., dragonfly nymphs,...
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Dear BlogIONIK readers, We are proud to present you our first guest article! For more information about the author you will find an author box at the end of the article. Thank you Simon! Best wishes, the BlogIONIK team Imagine huge sandy dunes, rare water resources and hardly any life – except a camel...
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