This excellent video from the TED Talks website deals with biomimicry, the concept of getting engineering inspiration from the natural world.

From the abstract: With 3.8 billion years of research and development on its side, nature has already solved problems that human designers and engineers still struggle with.

In this inspiring talk, Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry — the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment that sustains them, biomimicry can contribute to the long-term health of our planet.