Okra to stop bleeding, ants to detect cancer... Nature is a source of inspiration for amazing scientific discoveries
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Okra to stop bleeding and ants to detect cancer Nature has inspired amazing scientific discoveries
In light of the threats posed by climate change and human activities, animals and plants are more useful and important to humanity than ever and continue to inspire many scientific discoveries, sometimes unexpectedly.
"Nature has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting elegant solutions to very complex problems. So if we look at it, we can save time and come up with workable solutions immediately," Alon Gorodetsky of the University of California, Irvine, told AFP.
From cuttlefish skin heaters to using cow mucus to prevent sexually transmitted viruses, here's a selection of science papers published in 2022 inspired by nature.
- Okra to stop bleeding -
Okra, a tropical plant used in the preparation of many dishes from different cuisines of the world, can achieve powerful results, both in the kitchen and in medicine.
This sticky green vegetable particularly inspired Malcolm Cheng of the University of Manitoba in Canada, who discovered that its juice, once pressed and dried into a powder, could be turned into an effective biogel that forms a natural barrier that can stimulate the blood clotting. This feature can be used to make a natural dressing to quickly stop bleeding in surgical procedures.
After testing this innovation on heart and liver wounds in dogs and rabbits, this gel stopped bleeding in a minute, without the use of stitches.
Human trials of this innovation are planned in the coming years.
- Mini robots for rescue missions -
Glowing beetles (fireflies) that light up the night sky have inspired scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create tiny robots that can emit light as they fly.
To do this, they equipped the winged robots with artificial muscles, called actuators, to which light-emitting molecules were added.
Eventually, once equipped with sensors, this will allow these robots to autonomously intervene during rescue missions in a collapsed building, where large robots cannot go.
- Ants to detect cancer -
Detecting cancers with current methods (MRI, mammograms...) is often expensive and complicated.
So the researchers turn to animals: dogs but also... ants.
In a study conducted by the Sorbonne University in Paris, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, scientists used a sugary water reward to train a species of ant to smell the difference between the urine of mice with and without cancerous tumors.
About 100 ants were able to detect ovarian cancer and two types of breast cancer 95% of the time.
And while it takes at least six months to train a dog for this kind of detection, ants complete the task in less than an hour.
Cuttlefish skin to keep the coffee warm
The cuttlefish's body contains tiny organs called chromatophores, which can change in size or color dramatically. Inspired by this, Alon Gorodetsky, co-author of a study published in March in the journal Nature Sustainability, developed "mini metallic islands that can be separated" and assembled to create a thermoregulatory shell.
This innovation may one day be useful for keeping coffee or sandwiches warm.
"Nature is truly the epitome of innovation and engineering,"
