2 October 2026

^{Inspired by the diving movement of the kingfisher bird: the Japanese bullet train.}

 

A kingfisher spots a fish, leaves its perch and dives. Its pointed beak enters the water, followed by its head and body, with little splash. For the bird, this is lunch. For a Japanese railway engineer, it offered a clue to making a high-speed train a better neighbour.

The bird and the train faced different challenges, but both had to manage an abrupt change in their surroundings. Studying how one handled that transition helped engineers improve the other.

This is an example of biomimicry: studying living organisms and mimicking their forms, processes or strategies to solve human problems. Here's five great examples of how engineers successfully borrowed from nature.

 

1. Kingfishers and Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains

 

Japan’s Shinkansen had a noise problem that did not come from its wheels.

When a fast-moving train entered a narrow tunnel, it pushed air ahead of it, generating a compression wave. That wave travelled through the tunnel and emerged from the far end as a boom, disturbing nearby residents.

Eiji Nakatsu, an engineer involved in developing JR West’s 500-series Shinkansen, was also a keen birdwatcher. The kingfisher’s passage from air into water suggested a shape worth investigating.

Physical tests and computer simulations helped engineers develop a long, tapered nose. By introducing the train’s cross-section into the tunnel gradually, it softened the sudden pressure change. The finished nose extended roughly 15 metres.

In a 2005 interview, Nakatsu reported that the new series used 15% less electricity while travelling 10% faster than its predecessor. The bird-inspired proved to be successful.

 

2. Mosquito-inspired needles for gentler injections

 

You may notice a mosquito bite only when the itching begins. The initial puncture can escape your attention altogether.

This inspired researchers seeking ways to improve medical needles. A mosquito’s feeding apparatus contains a bundle of slender mouthparts, including serrated components that help penetrate skin.

Researchers have investigated how these structures move, how much force they require and how their stiffness varies. At Ohio State University, a team proposed a microneedle incorporating vibration, serrations and a softer tip, drawing on its analysis of mosquito anatomy. The proposal aimed to reduce the disturbance caused during insertion.

Later research tested three bundled stainless-steel microneedles with coordinated movements. Serrations could act as tiny anchors, helping the moving components penetrate tissue rather than simply pushing it ahead of them. 

These are experimental approaches to reducing puncture resistance, rather than proof of a painless injection. But the idea is compelling: a better needle might depend as much on the movement of its components as on their sharpness.

 

3. Termite-inspired cooling at the Eastgate Centre

 

Imagine arriving at an office on a hot morning. People, computers and sunlight will all add heat as the day progresses. The usual response is to make the cooling system work harder.

At Harare’s Eastgate Centre, a shopping centre and office block in Harare, Zimbabwe, the building itself helps manage that load: it is ventilated and cooled entirely by natural means.

The office and shopping complex opened in 1996, designed by architect Mick Pearce with engineering consultancy Arup. Termite mounds helped inspire its approach to ventilation and temperature control. Its specific architecture maintains a constant temperature in a climate that fluctuates greatly from night till day. The mound draws in outside air, then cool it by pulling it toward the base of the structure through chambers carved out of the wet mud, while hot air escapes through flues at the top of the mound .

Heavy building materials absorb heat during the day, slowing the increase in indoor temperature. This ability to absorb and store heat is known as thermal mass. Cooler night air helps remove accumulated heat, preparing the structure for the following morning. Carefully arranged airflow, assisted by fans, supports the process. Arup has reported that Eastgate uses 90% less energy for heating and cooling than a conventional building.

 

4. Humpback whale flippers and turbine blade design

 

A smooth blade looks efficient. A bumpy one looks as though something has gone wrong in the factory.

Humpback whale flippers challenge that assumption. Their leading edges carry rounded bumps called tubercles, which have prompted experiments with wings, fans and turbine blades.

As a wing or blade meets flowing air or water at an increasingly steep angle, the flow can separate from its surface, causing a substantial loss of lift known as stall. Wind-tunnel tests with model flippers show that tubercles can delay this and make the loss of lift more gradual. They alter the flow across different parts of the surface. 

That behaviour interests designers working with equipment exposed to changing flow conditions, including wind turbines.

The benefits depend on the blade and its operating environment. A numerical study of a modified wind turbine, for example, found poorer performance with tubercles at lower wind speeds, including 7 metres per second. 

Whale-inspired blades therefore require careful tuning. Their promise lies in showing engineers that a smooth edge is not always the best way to control moving air.

 

5. Shark skin and surfaces that resist bacterial attachment

 

A surface that looks smooth to us can be an inviting landscape for bacteria.

Shark skin, covered in tiny tooth-like scales called denticles, inspired a different approach. Sharklet uses an engineered microscopic pattern of small rectangular features arranged in repeating diamond-shaped formations.

The geometry changes how microorganisms interact with the surface. Laboratory studies have found reduced bacterial attachment and contamination compared with smooth versions of the same material, without adding antibiotics or other antimicrobial agents. 

The technology has been commercialised in surface films. Researchers have also investigated its use on medical devices, including catheters and breathing tubes, where bacterial attachment and the formation of persistent communities called biofilms can create problems. 

So what else might we learn from nature? Could the way a leaf moves water suggest a better cooling system, or an animal’s ability to repair tissue offer clues for new materials? We can't wait to find out where biomimicry takes us next.