AUAM Mollusca Biomimicry & Evolution True Coelom & Janine Benyus Discussion

Sometimes engineers and inventors develop innovative tools and products that are inspired by the traits of organisms. This is biomimicry. Below is a link to a video describing, in general, what biomimicry is:What is biomimicry? (Links to an external site.)

Additional links to information about some interesting examples of Mollusca-inspired biomimicry are also below:

The teeth of a species of chitin (type of marine snail) inspire improvements to solar cells and batteries (Links to an external site.)

Mussels inspire surgical glue invention (Links to an external site.)

Swimming micro-robots inspired by how scallops swim that may one-day have biomedical uses: (Links to an external site.)

A self-cooling building design that is inspired by desert snail shells (Links to an external site.)

Synthetic squid skin creates camouflage (Links to an external site.)

Eight octopus-inspired technologies (Links to an external site.)

Irridescent clams may provide key to more efficient solar cells (Links to an external site.)

Roboclam efficiently digs anchors for applications in marine environments (Links to an external site.)

After watching, consider these guiding questions when forming your responses for this class discussion, or come up with your own talking points (remember, you don’t need to respond to every question below):

Molluscan adaptations seem to be especially inspiring to inventors and engineers. Why do you think this is?

Given what you know about Mollusca diversity and adaptations, what are some specific traits that you think could inspire useful future technologies?

Briefly describe something presented in one of these videos and/or articles that you found to be particularly interesting and explain why.