Drawing inspiration from living things: a method as much as a philosophy

Cre­at­ing adhes­ives as strong as those of a gecko, threads as sol­id as spider silk, molecu­lar detect­ors with the pre­ci­sion of a shark’s sense of smell – these are some of the pos­sib­il­it­ies afforded by bio­mim­icry. But that’s not all because, bey­ond the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of cer­tain products inspired by nature, bio­mim­icry is also part of an eth­os and a glob­al approach to innov­a­tion. “Bio­mim­icry begins with an under­stand­ing of bio­lo­gic­al sys­tems, both on a molecu­lar level and in nat­ur­al envir­on­ments. The know­ledge acquired can then be trans­ferred to oth­er fields of applic­a­tion, so it is first and fore­most a design meth­od. It’s also a philo­sophy,” explains Kalina Raskin, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of Cee­bios (Centre d’études et d’expertise en biomimétisme).

“This approach involves draw­ing inspir­a­tion from liv­ing things to devise solu­tions com­pat­ible with eco­lo­gic­al factors,” agrees Emmanuel Delan­noy, a pion­eer of bio­mim­icry in France and a spe­cial­ist in biod­iversity. “Liv­ing things offer a set of spe­cific­a­tions that are rel­ev­ant to today’s eco­nom­ic and eco­lo­gic­al chal­lenges”, he adds. This is because they depend on the renew­al of raw mater­i­als and store CO₂ in a very energy-effi­cient way. “Liv­ing organ­isms only pro­duce mater­i­als from atoms that are in plen­ti­ful sup­ply, at ambi­ent tem­per­at­ure and pres­sure, and with a very high degree of mater­i­al cir­cu­lar­ity,” explains Kalina Raskin. “Life forms have adap­ted to all envir­on­ments and con­straints. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is the key issue in this long his­tory of co-evol­u­tion,” adds Emmanuel Delan­noy.

This approach has already led to the devel­op­ment of products that will soon be on the mar­ket, such as propul­sion sys­tems inspired by the move­ments of fish (EEL Energy’s tid­al tur­bines¹, FinX’s motors² and even Corwave’s heart pumps³), products for agri­cul­ture based on microal­gae (Car­bon­Works’ CO₂ cap­ture sys­tems⁴, Immunrise’s anti­fungals⁵ and Algosource’s bio­act­ive ingredi­ents⁶) or insects (M2i Life Science’s biocon­trol products⁷), or even new tech­no­lo­gies (Prophesee’s ret­ina-inspired cam­era⁸, or Biomemory’s DNA-based data stor­age⁹). 

Eco­sys­tems don’t favour sim­pli­fied systems

Nev­er­the­less, bio­mim­icry is still not yet a term that is well under­stood. And it should be known that it is not cur­rently being used with the inten­tion of green­ing any pro­cess that even remotely resembles a liv­ing object. “We call this trend bio­mi­wash­ing,” says Kalina Raskin. More and more “nature-inspired” products are appear­ing on the mar­ket, and they have more to do with storytelling than with a sci­entif­ic approach. “The use of bio­mi­met­ic ter­min­o­logy without any real sci­entif­ic basis under­mines the cred­ib­il­ity of the approach”, insists the dir­ect­or of Ceebios.

Bio­mim­icry is now sub­ject to the ISO 18458 stand­ard, which provides a frame­work to use the term. Cee­bios, in part­ner­ship with ADEME and the Saint-Etienne eco-design cluster, is also pre­par­ing “an intro­duct­ory guide to bio­mim­icry for eco-design”. For Kalina Raskin, the aim is to “explain the import­ance of the approach and encour­age man­u­fac­tur­ers to meas­ure the bio­mim­icry com­pon­ent in their processes”.

Emmanuel Delan­noy sug­gests going even fur­ther. “Eco­sys­tems don’t favour sim­pli­fied sys­tems,” he points out. They tend towards com­plex­ity and diver­si­fic­a­tion, estab­lish­ing bal­ances and shar­ing resources. This goes against the grain of cur­rent indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion meth­ods, which dis­cour­age diversity.  The spe­cial­ist ima­gines sys­tems whose effi­ciency will not be meas­ured on per­form­ance alone, but cap­able of mov­ing towards great­er com­plex­ity, tol­er­at­ing diversity and being more frugal. “It’s not neces­sar­ily the optim­isa­tion of an out­put that counts, but the bal­ance of the sys­tem”, he explains. He is think­ing, for example, of logist­ics sys­tems that com­bine com­ple­ment­ary solu­tions to adapt to dif­fer­ent con­di­tions on the ground.

Bio­mim­icry could also devel­op by broad­en­ing its mod­els. The bio­lo­gic­al objects most stud­ied from a bio­mi­met­ic angle are the gecko, the shark, the lotus, the eagle, the king­fish­er, the Japan­ese fugu, spider silk, the flip­per of the hump­back whale… “Experts estim­ate that the Earth is home to more than 20 mil­lion spe­cies. But only 2 mil­lion have been iden­ti­fied, and very few have been stud­ied at the inter­dis­cip­lin­ary inter­faces,” points out Kalina Raskin.

Today, advoc­ates of bio­mim­icry want to incor­por­ate the meth­od into indus­tri­al toolkits. “To move from being a nov­elty to a routine pro­cess, we need to increase the num­ber of bio­lo­gic­al mod­els”, adds Kalina Raskin.

In response, Cee­bios has set up a pro­gramme with the Museum nation­al d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) fun­ded by the Banque Pub­lique d’Investissement. The aim is to bring togeth­er industry and research labor­at­or­ies to jointly address the issues at stake. “For example, we need new anti­foul­ing coat­ings, mater­i­als with bet­ter mech­an­ic­al res­ist­ance, and new agents for col­our opa­city. To under­stand these indus­tri­al issues, we are work­ing with research­ers at the MNHN to find organ­isms whose bio­logy we can exam­ine”, explains Kalina Raskin.

Pro­gress is being made in the devel­op­ment of the concept. How­ever, in order to become truly estab­lished, it will have to over­come a major risk. “There is a strong bias towards tech­no­lo­gic­al solu­tions, the idea that there is a solu­tion to every prob­lem, and a tech­no­lo­gic­al one at that, without tak­ing a crit­ic­al look at it”, explains Emmanuel Delan­noy, “this kind of think­ing is not com­pat­ible with the eth­ics of bio­mim­icry. “We must always ask ourselves wheth­er it is really neces­sary, by tak­ing into account the solu­tion to a real cur­rent need and the human and eco­lo­gic­al chal­lenges of the future,” insists the specialist.

Agnès Vernet