The Borrowed Nature of Biomimicry

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: 99% Invisible
Host: Roman Mars
Episode: The Borrowed Nature of Biomimicry
Date: August 4, 2026

In this episode, Roman Mars and producer Kurt Kohlstedt dive into the fascinating world of biomimicry—the practice of modeling human designs on solutions found in nature. They explore classic stories and widely circulated myths, from high-profile successes to cases where the story outshined scientific truth, and ultimately challenge the neat narrative that often accompanies biomimicry in the public imagination.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Introduction to Biomimicry (01:01–03:29)

• Roman Mars introduces the iconic story of the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan, which solved its sonic boom problem by modeling the train’s nose after the kingfisher’s beak. This redesign became a classic example of biomimicry.
• Insight: Biomimicry is often presented as a neat transfer of nature’s wisdom to human innovation, but real-life cases tend to be much more complex.
• Notable Quote:
  • Roman Mars (02:22): “Stories about biomimicry are catnip to design journalists like me.”

Success Story: The Thames Tunnel and Shipworm (03:51–11:54)

• Kurt Kohlstedt tells the story of engineer Marc Brunel, who was inspired by the tunneling techniques of the shipworm (actually a mollusk) to invent the “tunneling shield.”
• Details:
  • Early attempts to tunnel under the Thames failed disastrously.
  • Brunel observed that shipworms stabilized their tunnels by simultaneously excavating and lining them—a concept he adapted into engineering.
  • The resulting Thames Tunnel became the world’s first tunnel under a river and shaped future tunneling technology.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Roman Mars, reading Brunel’s letter (08:18): “I then said to myself that these little things have made little tunnels, so might we by adopting some corresponding means of protection.”
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (10:55): “It was literally, pardon the pun, groundbreaking.”
• Timestamps:
  • Shipworm inspiration begins: (06:28)
  • Brunel’s tunneling shield innovation: (09:05)
  • Impact on modern tunneling: (11:21)

Case Study: The Mercedes-Benz "Bionic" Boxfish Car (12:23–21:42)

• Story: In 2005, Mercedes unveiled the "Bionic," a concept car supposedly inspired by the aerodynamics of the boxfish.
• The car’s PR story claimed it was a direct transfer from nature to technology, purporting to mimic the boxfish’s efficient shape.
• Reality Check:
  • Early scientific studies suggested the boxfish shape was streamlined, but later research revealed it was actually optimized for maneuverability, not aerodynamics—a critical flaw for automotive application.
  • Despite these findings, Mercedes stuck with the biomimicry story for marketing.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Roman Mars (12:52): “That sounds like vague nonsense. I don’t even know what that means.”
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (16:24): “I also think it’s pretty cute. And I’m not the only one… for a while, it was probably the most widely circulated example of automotive biomimicry in the world.”
  • Roman Mars (18:45): “If anything, it’s basically the exact opposite.”
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (19:56): “It’s still up there. It’s like the story of this thing was always the point, it was never about whether the car actually worked.”
• Timestamps:
  • Mercedes begins biomimicry journey: (12:23)
  • Scientific myth-busting and true function of boxfish: (17:37)
  • Biomimicry as PR, not product: (21:12)

Biomimicry as PR and the Problem of Simplification (21:42–22:01)

• Discussion of Water Bottle Startup:
  • Example of a startup that claimed to have developed a self-filling water bottle based on the Namib Desert Beetle—an idea that generated buzz and investment, but not actual success.
  • Highlights how biomimicry narratives can be used for media and fundraising regardless of engineering viability.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (21:18): “It did get so much coverage in Wired and NPR…and they even raised millions of dollars on the backs of those beetles.”
• Timestamps:
  • Water bottle story: (20:43–21:18)

The Ambiguity and Complexity of Biomimicry: Honeycomb Panels (25:01–33:29)

• Origin of Honeycomb Structures:
  • Aerospace engineers use hexagonal “honeycomb” panels for efficiency, often referencing bees as inspiration.
  • The history is muddy: bees, humans, and nature have independently arrived at these shapes; some see bees as "heaven-instructed mathematicians."
  • Darwin grappled with explaining the “perfection” of the honeycomb through evolution, not divine intervention.
  • Bees don’t build hexagons directly; their efforts collectively create the shape.
• New Discoveries:
  • Recent work by 3D printing expert Dhruv Bate and entomologist Clint Pennock revealed that real honeycombs are more structurally complex than their engineered counterparts—rounded edges, varying wall thickness, etc. These natural design details offer performance benefits still relevant today.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Roman Mars (29:42), quoting Darwin: “He must be a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a comb…without enthusiastic admiration.”
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (33:29): “Even in the [space] age, bees are building better hexagons than we do.”
• Timestamps:
  • Honeycomb history: (25:01–26:50)
  • Darwin’s dilemma: (26:50–28:18)
  • Modern research & fresh biomimetic learning: (31:14–33:29)

Concluding Reflections (33:29–34:31)

• Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt reflect on the appeal of simple biomimicry narratives and the deeper fascination found in the complexity, ambiguity, and back-and-forth between human inventiveness and natural inspiration.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Roman Mars (33:36): “It makes me think about the very simple biomimicry story... It’s cool, easy to convey, but it’s pretty flat and flavorless by comparison.”
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (33:51): “There is something richer ultimately about ones like the honeycomb story, where you have human creativity and nature ending up in this more complex back-and-forth conversation.”

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Memorable Moments & Quotes (w/ Timestamps)

• Shipworm Tunnel Inspiration:
  • Brunel, via Roman Mars (08:18): “These little things have made little tunnels, so might we...”
• PR over Science:
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (19:56): “It’s like the story of this thing was always the point, it was never about whether the car actually worked.”
• Darwin’s View on Bees:
  • (29:42): "He must be a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a comb so beautifully adapted to its end without enthusiastic admiration."
• Modern Day Lessons:
  • Kurt Kohlstedt (33:29): “Even in the [space] age, bees are building better hexagons than we do.”

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Structured Episode Timeline

| Time | Segment/Event | Summary | |------------|-----------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 01:01–03:29| Kingfisher Bullet Train | Classic biomimicry story, basic principles | | 03:51–11:54| Shipworm & the Thames Tunnel | Mechanical shield mimics animal behavior, true success| | 12:23–21:42| Boxfish & the Mercedes “Bionic” Car | Marketing trumps science, complexity beneath claims | | 21:42–22:01| PR Biomimicry: The Water Bottle | Media allure, lack of technical success | | 25:01–33:29| Honeycomb Panels: From Bees to Aerospace | Evolution, geometry, modern research, ambiguity | | 33:29–34:31| Conclusion | Reflection on neat stories vs. complex realities |

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Thematic Takeaways

• Biomimicry is powerful but rarely as simple as textbook cases suggest. Sometimes inspiration is direct and revolutionary (the Thames Tunnel), but more often, the narrative is constructed for marketing, or the true story is complex and nonlinear.
• Nature and human design are in a constant conversation, informing each other through both success and misunderstanding.
• “Borrowing” from nature often means ongoing learning, not just a single act of imitation.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is an insightful, entertaining journey through the real, messy practice of biomimicry—showing you why the stories we tell about borrowing from nature are as fascinating, multifaceted, and sometimes flawed as the science and design behind them. You'll come away with a deeper appreciation for both the elegance of natural engineering and the narratives that shape our understanding of it.

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Transcript

[Roman Mars]

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[Kurt Kohlstedt]

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[Kurt Kohlstedt]

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[Roman Mars]

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Back in 1989, the engineers of Japan's famous Shinkansen bullet train realized they had a problem. The train was moving so fast that when it went into a tunnel, it basically punched the air out the far end, creating little sonic booms. All across Japan, the Shinkansen was rattling buildings and disturbing residents in the neighborhoods it passed through. An engineering team was brought in to design a quieter and more efficient train. And they had a secret weapon. Eiji Nikatsu, the general manager of the technical development department, was a birdwatcher. As he thought about the redesign, Nikatsu took inspiration from elements of his favorite birds, including owl feathers and penguin bellies. But the bird that inspired the most important element of the redesign was the Kingfisher. Kingfishers are famous for the elegant way they dive into the water to catch fish. Their uniquely shaped beaks allow them to break the surface of the water with barely a splash. And so Nikatsu and the Shinkansen design team decided to model the nose of their bullet trains off the Kingfisher's beak. And. And it worked. The new Shinkansen trains were quieter and more efficient. That Kingfisher redesign is now seen as a classic example of what's known as biomimicry, the act of looking to the non human world for solutions to human design challenges. Biomimicry is simply design that is inspired by nature.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Right? And I have to say that Stories about biomimicry are. Are catnip to design journalists like me,

[Roman Mars]

that is Kurt Kohlstedt, our resident design guy.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yep. And biomimicry, it's just this really inspiring concept. Right. With all these fascinating examples, like the invention of Velcro being inspired by someone noticing how burrs stuck to his dog's fur and to his jacket while he was out on a walk.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. I mean, I love these stories. We love these stories on the show. We've covered biomimicry a lot over the years because the stories are just very catchy. Like, there is something so seductive about the idea of designers borrowing from nature to solve a human problem. It's just a very neat, simple, and just compelling narrative.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, for sure. But recently I've been digging into a bunch of biomimicry stories, and they are not always quite as neat and simple as that bullet train story. The causality is often quite a bit murkier than the headlines would have you believe. And the relationship between nature and human inspiration is often a lot more complicated. Yeah.

[Roman Mars]

And that actually makes biomimicry sound more interesting to me, not less like. I like that idea of a complex story way better.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, I agree. Same here. So today we're going to dive deeper. Go beyond some simple headlines, separate some fact from fiction, and, yeah, go into some more nuanced cases. But to kick things off and ground us in the concept, I want to start with a relatively straightforward yet lesser known example of biomimetic design. So this story takes place in the early 1800s in London, England, which was not yet that modern city that we know, with its sophisticated transit network or really even basic sanitation, but it was already the largest city in the world and the largest port in the world. And when people needed to cross the city's famous Thames river near that port, they took the London Bridge. But that bridge was notoriously crowded. It was like a choke point for everyday citizens and also commercial traffic, which really burdened people as well as, you know, the city's commerce. And so over time, it became clear that another crossing downstream was desperately needed.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, that makes sense to me. They needed another bridge totally.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Except with the geography of the river and the port and the existing bridge, the another bridge would have interfered severely with shipping access. So that solution was a non starter. And the only real alternative was to tunnel under the river. But this is way before the Chunnel to France or even the London Underground. So there was no precedent for tunnels going under active waterways. Tunneling technology at this point was essentially an Extension of mining technology. Right. Dealing with solid rock and soil, but not the undersides of rivers. And so they tried to use those surface traditional mining techniques to tunnel under the Thames, but it ended in disaster and in some cases the deaths of workers. And experts eventually came to conclude that this type of tunnel represented an impossible challenge. An engineer named Mark Brunel even wrote that prior attempts had so completely failed that he conceived one. All further exertions on the subject quite fruitless, as in it would be pointless to even try. But Brunel was about to have an experience that would completely change his mind.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so what happened?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, I think it's best if I let him explain it. So here's an excerpt from a letter that he wrote to his granddaughter later on, recalling his time working for the British Royal Navy. And I'm just going to have you

[Roman Mars]

read it about the year 1812. Being then employed in the dockyard at Chatham. I happened to see before me a piece of condemned timber, a portion of the keel of a ship, wherein the worm, the Teredo nivalis, had made many erosions.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

And by erosions he means tunnels, like tunnels through the wood.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so in modern English, like he saw a piece of timber that had been worm eaten along the docks.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Except that the so called naval shipworm is not actually a worm. In reality, it's a strangely adapted bivalve mollusk.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, like a clam?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, yeah, except specialized for boring holes. And it works like this. Like its shell has evolved into a pair of grinding plates. And behind those plates trails this long, soft elongated body that can reach a couple of feet in length.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, it sounds terrifying. It sounds something that I would eat eventually as an appetizer.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Hopefully it wouldn't eat you, right?

[Roman Mars]

I mean, you put some mignonette on it, you know, like you scrape it out, it's gonna be tasty.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. He didn't go quite that far, but he did pull out a magnifying glass, which is a thing that he was known to carry around, and went in for a closer look. And as he looked, he noticed that the walls of these boreholes that were carved by these worms seemed remarkably stable. Even when they were in waterlogged and like rotting chunks of wood from old ships, they were protected. So here's Brunel again from that same letter.

[Roman Mars]

I then said to myself that these little things have made little tunnels, so might we by adopting some corresponding means of protection. I mean, that's basically like the textbook definition of biomimicry. So what did Brunel notice about how the shipworms made their tunnels.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

So the trick that he recognized and then set out to copy was that shipworms do two things at the same time. Even as they scrape out the wood in front of them and move forward into that hole, they extrude a lining that coats and reinforces the tunnel around and behind them.

[Roman Mars]

Okay. So while they dig, they also immediately shore up the tunnel around them, which describes basically all excavations. So how is this different from other attempts?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, well, so think of it this way, right? Miners used to working in hard soil could get away with digging for a stretch and then stopping for a bit and then going back and putting up supports behind them. And Brunel recognized that that kind of iterative system just was not going to cut it under the Thames, because any gap in space or time between digging and shoring up invited disaster. And so with that in mind, in 1818, he went and patented a machine that would work more like a shipworm digging and then reinforcing simultaneously.

[Roman Mars]

So how did Brunel's machine do that?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, the crucial piece was what he called a tunneling shield. Basically, it was this massive cast iron frame that was pressed flush against the face of the excavation. And under that shield, you would have dozens of miners chipping away at the front of the tunnel while bricklayers shored up the tunnel behind them. So as the excavation progressed, the shield would be pushed forward and the newly exposed sections were immediately lined with cemented bricks. And so it was all part of this smooth and continuous effort, like the shipworm tunneling and shoring up behind itself simultaneously.

[Roman Mars]

That's so cool.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. And really challenging because, you know, Brunel had to piece together this system from all these moving parts and people, because the technology at the time was not up to making, like, a machine that could automate all of this. Right. It had to be people doing manual labor. And ultimately, it worked. It took a really long time, and it did not always go smoothly. But eventually, Brunel completed the tunnel spanning over a thousand feet under the Thames in 1843.

[Roman Mars]

And that was the first tunnel built underneath a river anywhere in the world.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, I mean, no, like, it was literally, pardon the pun, groundbreaking. Nobody on Earth had ever made and walked through a tunnel like this before. And it didn't stop there, because Brudel's design, that tunnel shield, shaped subsequent tunneling technology. Years later, when they built out subway systems in London and across the pond in New York, they use that same basic tunnel shield.

[Roman Mars]

That's so cool.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

And the funny thing is, modern machines have, if anything, converged even more on those mollusks that originally inspired Brunel. Because now we have machines with attachments that place precast concrete panels as the borer tunnels onward. So it is like that all in one thing.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so despite all the setbacks, we are really talking about a very straightforward case of biomimicry, like nature inspiring. A human design sees something in nature, copies it, perfects it, Boom, success.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. And that's why I wanted to start here, honestly, because I wanted to ground us in a success story where nature really was this direct inspiration for human design. But there are a lot of other stories that don't perfectly follow that. Neat, direct trajectory. Stories where the relationship between nature and human design inspiration is not quite so clear cut.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so I'm very excited to muddy the waters a little bit. So what is next?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, a different sort of fishy biomimicry with some real twists and strange turns. Starting back in 2005 when Mercedes Benz made a big splash with their bionic, which was this new concept car that boasted a biomimetic origin story. They claimed their design was the first of its kind to attempt a complete transfer from nature to technology. End quote.

[Roman Mars]

Well, that sounds like vague nonsense. I don't even know what that means.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, well, the argument was essentially that biomimicry usually involves borrowing, like a single feature or behavior from an animal, like a bird's feather or a whale's fin, but that their new car was modeled on an entire organism, the boxfish. Here's a picture of it.

[Roman Mars]

If you're picturing a boxy fish, because it's called a boxfish, you're right on, right on the money. I mean, like, it is a floating cube with fins.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, exactly. And it's part of this family of really awkwardly angular fish. Including the cow fish and the trunk fish.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, I mean, you know, compared to the naval shipworm, this thing is adorable. I mean, it's like bright yellow with spots on it. But I have to admit, this thing doesn't look aerodynamic at all. Like, this seems like the opposite of an animal that you'd model a car on. So what was the logic behind modeling a vehicle on this boxy shape?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, big picture. You know, the engineers at Mercedes were into this idea of biomimicry, and so they started scouring the animal kingdom for inspiration. And they wondered if a fish, for example, could provide that inspiration for a car design. But cars have to be boxy. There's spaces that house humans, and a long Sleek fish is just never going to translate into a functional car. And so if there is a boxy fish that has evolved to be aerodynamic and boxy, that really could be a breakthrough that works all around.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, but what made them think that the boxfish was aerodynamic?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, well, it started with some real serious scientific research that they came across that was being done into the boxfish, in particular a study being run by a team spanning ucla, Caltech and Woods Hole. And so they discovered that there are nuances to the shape of the boxfish that help stabilize it. Basically, boxfish have these ridges that are called keels that run along their sides, and these help create little eddies which help them coordinate course. Correct. As they swim through the water.

[Roman Mars]

Which I suppose is what you want to keep a car running smoothly, like on a highway. It's like you want it to be stable. So that makes some sense.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Precisely. And after reading the peer reviewed research papers, Mercedes engineers even reached out and called up one of the researchers to learn more about their study. And then they took it a step further and did research of their own. They had drag tests around 3D models of these fish that suggested that despite their squarish face, they were surprisingly streamlined, at least in controlled conditions. And so in the end, Mercedes designers concluded that the boxfish, for all of its boxiness, represented a, quote, aerodynamic ideal. End quote.

[Roman Mars]

And the bionic is the car that they built. The Mercedes built.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Exactly. They didn't just design it, they actually built it. And here's a picture of what it looks like, right? It's a car which, true to its inspiration, is relatively boxy, as you can see. And it also has these angled ridges along the side that came from the boxfish, More or less.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I'm looking at a picture now. It is definitely boxy. It's pretty cute. I mean, it sort of looks like lime green BW Bug with, you know, some more squarish features. Kind of like a van bug, you know, kind of.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's a great description. And honestly, I also think it's pretty cute. And I'm not the only one. When Mercedes put this car out into the world in the spotlight at a big public event, it was a hit. The bionic design got featured in Nat Geo. It was like installed in the MoMA. And for a while it was probably the most widely circulated example of automotive biomimicry in the world.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, but I haven't seen one of these, so I'm assuming it never got out of the concept car stage. Right.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, that's right. There is no commercial car that evolved out of this. The bionic was really never truly made to go on the roads. It was just a concept car that got a bunch of attention and had a bunch of stories written about it. But, you know, like, that from their perspective, was kind of the whole idea in the first place. Mercedes might not have gotten a commercial car to sell, but they did get this great story that helped associate their brand with being like, eco friendly and cutting edge and tied into this legacy of natural design that had evolved in the organic elements over the eons.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, but so far, this seems like a pretty straightforward biomimicry story.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, it would be if the story ended there. And for Mercedes, it basically did. But the fish scientists, like scientists do, kept going. And 10 years after the bionics big reveal, researchers with new technologies published new findings that painted a very different picture. The old data wasn't wrong, exactly. It was just woefully incomplete. And long story short, it turns out that the boxfish in its totality is definitely not a, quote, aerodynamic ideal. In fact, if anything, it's basically the exact opposite.

[Roman Mars]

So what did they find out?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, the new team, led by a biomorphology researcher named Sam Van Wassenberg, modeled that blunt, boxy front plowing head on through the water. And look, it does do okay aerodynamically, as Mercedes had concluded, if it's going straightforward. But as soon as the fish turns its head, the. Its aerodynamics are totally destabilized, which doesn't

[Roman Mars]

sound like a great model for a car.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, or definitely not the one they were envisioning. Because it turns out that the boxfish's superpower is maneuverability, not aerodynamics. And if you actually watch them, they're not straight line swimmers or speed racers. They are these reef fish, and they spend their days threading their way through reefs and evading predators. These are animals that need to turn on a dime. So they're super agile and they flick their fins and rotate themselves in three dimensions, which is very cool and totally useful to them. But, yeah, it's not what you're looking for in a car. With a car, you want a shape that can travel fast and, you know, run smooth in one direction even in high winds, just sort of stay on course. And the boxfish for those purposes was essentially the worst fish to choose.

[Roman Mars]

So the bionic, it came out, it had a big splash. It was like, sent around, I'm sure, online a lot. When the new research came out, did Mercedes respond to it at All?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Oh no, not at all. And in fact the Bionics official webpage still describes the boxfish as having a, quote, highly streamlined body shape.

[Roman Mars]

Wait, so they still have a webpage for this thing?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, yeah, it's still up there. It's still like part of their marketing material. It's like the story of this thing was always the point, it was never about whether the car actually worked.

[Roman Mars]

So this kind of biomimicry story, would you classify it as more typical than the TAMS tunnel success? Is this the type of thing that is mostly what happens when we try to use biomimetic design?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, I would say that failures are definitely more common than successes. But there's also other kinds of non successes, like basically sort of fake stories of having biomimetic inspiration or at least like vastly simplified ones. Right, right.

[Roman Mars]

Like just telling a biomimicry story about a product just so it sounds more interesting.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Exactly. And there are a lot of those. And a classic example is this startup that claimed to have invented a water bottle based on the Namib desert beetle, which is this insect that has actually evolved a way to capture water out of thin air. It collects and combines droplets on its back and then those trickle down to its mouth so it can drink them. And so these water bottles were, you know, gonna do that same thing essentially and fill themselves up.

[Roman Mars]

Right. Like, but since I haven't heard of a self filling water bottle, I assume that that just didn't work.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, no, no, it did not actually work, but it did get so much coverage in Wired and NPR and BBC and like the list goes on. They even raised millions of dollars on the backs of those beetles. So yeah, the water bottle, like the bionic, it was really more about PR than real biomimicry. And honestly it had less pretensions to even tie to science, I think than the bionic did. Yeah, yeah.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so we have one example of successful biomimicry with the tunnel. We have the Mercedes example which is really, you know, a success in marketing, but not really successful as a product. So what's next?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Something that is honestly a little more complicated and less straightforward than either of those.

[Roman Mars]

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[Roman Mars]

via virtual prepaid guard card. Typically takes 15 days after rebate submission price guarantee on talk text and 5G data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. So we're back Talking about Biomimicry with Kurt Colston.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

So our final story is about a structural design that you can find basically anywhere in the aerospace industry. If you peel back a panel on a Boeing plane or a NASA shuttle, you'll see an array of hexagons. And these are called honeycomb sandwich panels. They look like and will instantly remind you of beehives.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. So honeycomb panels, I've definitely seen them before. I think anyone who's paid attention to structures at all have seen them before. Were they inspired by bees?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, that seemingly simple question is actually surprisingly difficult to answer, because if you think about it like, people have been admiring and examining honeycombs since ancient times. Like, the earliest written account we have of why they might create hexagonal shapes dates back to 37 BC. And it was around this time that geometers had figured out that hexagons are one of only three shapes that you can tile continuously and without gaps. There are squares, which, of course, you can visualize in a grid.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, like our logo.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. And triangles, which, like, if you can picture a truss or if you just kind of alternate up and down, you can see those tiling forever. Right. And then there are hexagons. And of all that set, hexagons are the ones that give you the most space, as in the most area per unit of edge. Which means that if you're tiling an array of shapes, these are the ones that let you use the least material. So for bees, that's more efficient, and it makes building easier. But humans benefit from that same efficiency and other structural features which we'll get to later.

[Roman Mars]

So in this case, because this is a super efficient structural solution to lots of problems, bees and engineers, you know, kind of just came up with the same solution. That makes total sense to me.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

But in the midst of the modern era, another contingent came along and saw honeycombs as examples of intelligent design. In the 1800s, one clergyman naturalist lauded bees as heaven instructed mathematicians. Darwin actually saw this line of thinking as a big threat to his work. Even in the 1850s, as he was writing on the Origin of Species. Huh.

[Roman Mars]

So why would the bees, being good at geometry, be a problem for evolution?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Great question. And so, basically, if evolution is incremental. Right. How do bees arrive at a perfect geometry? Like, what are the steps they take? Because, you know, a slightly off, incomplete hexagon isn't a natural step towards making a good hexagon. It's just a bad shape. And. And so where do we find the in between versions? And if there aren't any, the natural theological argument goes, somebody or some God must have handed the bees the answer. Also, I suspect there was kind of a gut level intuition behind all of this. Like, if you look around at the natural world, you see curves and fractals and all these chaotic things. But precise, angular polygons are pretty weird and rare. And so they seemed just visually like an exception to the norm.

[Roman Mars]

Right, right, right. So I can sort of see the argument or why it was complicated. And that was what had Darwin worried.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. In fact, so much so that he actually kept bees to research and experiment on while he was writing Origin. And what he observed is that bees don't build hexagons outright. They actually dig roundish holes that are, well, basically bee shaped. Right? Yeah. But when a bunch of them do that, you know, in a grid, they end up bumping into each other. And as they approach their neighbors, they naturally make walls around those shared edges, and that turns into hexagons.

[Roman Mars]

Right. So they never really build a hexagon shape. Like they dig a round hole and you put up some walls for support, and they're surrounded by other neighbors who are doing the same thing. And the sides of the circular holes kind of push against each other and flatten out so that you get a hexagon shape.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Exactly. None of which is to say that honeycombs aren't natural wonders. In fact, Darwin was a huge fan, and after he finished his research with these bees, he organized a whole section of Origin around them and their honeycombs, and in which he argued that these were amazing examples of the power of evolution. And here's a little excerpt from that chapter.

[Roman Mars]

He must be a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a comb so beautifully adapted to its end without enthusiastic admiration. We hear from mathematicians that bees have practically made their cells of the proper shape to hold the greatest possible amount of honey with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

And, you know, there were already all of these connections. But when Darwin published Origin, honeybees and hexagons became stuck together in one of the most popular science books of the century and were essentially inextricably linked ever since. So when hexagonal panels are created around a century after Darwin, of course, they get named honeycomb panels.

[Roman Mars]

Right, right. I mean, you're just naming them after what they look like. You know, like that makes sense to me. But in terms of biomimicry, in terms of our subject today, were the aerospace engineers who were using the honeycomb shapes, were they Building off of the logic of bees, or were they building off the legacy of human researchers who came before them?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

I mean, yes, I would say both. All of the above. And I rather dig that ambiguity. Like, there is no simple, straight line from nature to humans. And, you know, after 2,000 plus years of honeycomb history bringing us to the modern aerospace industry, you might think that that would be the end of the story. But I have one last little twist for you.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, awesome. Okay, I want to hear more.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah. So in the late 2010s, this 3D printing expert named Dhruv Bate got to thinking about honeycombs. And he wondered if there was maybe more to them than this platonic ideal of this particular six sided polygon. So he sought out an expert, an entomologist named Clint Pennock, who was working at an actual biomimicry center at Arizona State. And Clint was shocked to discover that Dhruv, who had built a whole career on honeycomb structures, had never even seen an actual honeycomb in real life.

[Roman Mars]

You know what, I worked in science for a long time. This actually does not surprise me. Right, yeah.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Because, you know, most engineers, they don't need to bother with bees. They know the shape. Right. But Clint sees this, and he starts showing Dhruv actual honeycombs. And together they begin to look at how bees vary by species. And they observe that real honeycombs are actually quite a bit different from those sort of rigidly repetitive human made honeycomb panels.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so how did they differ?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, the easiest difference is at the corners at these intersections that are sharply angled in human honeycomb panels, but in nature often have different degrees of rounding.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me, because as Darwin described, you know, like, the. The bees are kind of making a circle, and it turns into a hexagon. So, like, not having other circles around you means that the edges are more rounded.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so Clint and Dhruv used 3D printing to replicate those curves. And. And what they found is that they can offer real structural benefits. So ultimately, the pair got NASA funding to look even more closely, and they x rayed and characterized these different combs from dozens of different species of bees and wasps. And they documented all kinds of smaller details, like the variations in the wall thicknesses and the way that separate comb sections are, like, joined together. And sure enough, subtler elements of the cone shape were found to improve structural performance with potential aerospace applications.

[Roman Mars]

Wow. So, like, even in the swase age, bees are building better hexagons than we do.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, I mean, it depends upon the bee and the application, but we are definitely still learning stuff from them. Which is crazy, huh?

[Roman Mars]

I love that story. I mean, it makes me think about the very simple biomimicry story that we started with the sort of Kingfisher bullet train story. It's cool, it's easy to convey, but it's pretty flat and flavorless by comparison.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know if I'd go that far because there's something I really still dig about those straightforward biomimicry stories. But sure, yes, there is something also richer ultimately about ones like the honeycomb story, where you have human creativity and nature ending up in this more complex back and forth conversation with one another.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, like a recursive discussion between nature and humans about, you know, the virtues of shapes, I guess. Kurt, this was so much fun. I appreciate this tour through various kinds

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

of biomimicry, of course, Roman Anytime.

[Roman Mars]

99% Invisible was reported this week by Kurt Kohlstedt, produced by Jacob Medina Gleason and edited by Emmett Fitzgerald. Mix by Martine Gonzalez Music by Swan Real Fact Checking by Graham Hathy Tu is our Executive producer, Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason De Leon, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leshma, Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Talon and Rain Stradley, and me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family now, headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building and beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail].

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

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[Roman Mars]

Kinda like him.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Hey, did I hear there's a pill version of Ozempic? Yep, you sure did. Ask your doctor about which FDA approved uses of the Ozempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1833 ozempic or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about ozempic semaglutide tablets 9 milligrams and ozempic semagLutide injection 2 milligrams. There's a pill version of Ozempic. It's Halloween time at the Disneyland Resort and Minnie's begun to brew up delight and spine tingling Fun. Halloween time August 21st through October 31st. Visit Disneyland.com or contact your travel advisor for important details. Courage. I learned it from my adoptive mom.

[Roman Mars]

Hold my hand.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

You hold my hand. Learn about adopting a teen from foster [e-mail] you can't imagine the reward brought to you by Adopt Us Kids, the U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.