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Here's What's Awesome: All-Animal Edition

By Brady Carlson on Sunday, March 07, 2010

A lot of what this column (and Word of Mouth as a whole) does is tracking trends as they emerge - green technology, for one. Or new ways of looking at how our brains interpret the world. One I've spotted a lot lately is the trend of modeling new technologies off of unique features of animals. This isn't new in and of itself, but animal-inspiration seems to be more and more at the forefront of really creative and outside-the-box technology. Couple this with the well-documented trend of animals being cute on the internet, and voila, we have an all-animal edition of

- Mapping Brazil Mudslides

- The Legal Rights of Climate Change Victims

- Weaponizing the Music of Mozart

nhpr.org/hereswhatsawesome">Here's What's Awesome!

If anybody was looking for clean floors, all they'd have to do is follow the spiders
Science is always looking to get cleaner as well as greener, and the next clean thing (ha! get it?) might be a technique modeled after spiders. Typically repellent surfaces use chemicals to keep water out, but this surface, put together at the University of Florida, instead uses a design of tiny fibers patterned after the ones water spiders use to keep from drowning. Lots of testing still to come on this front, though I doubt any of it involves watching any of the great giant spider movies. Anybody up for a little "Eight Legged Freaks"? [LiveScience]

Doc, it hurts when I sting this
Humans have been impressed with Alexander Fleming since he introduced the world to penicillin in the 1920's, but a kind of wasp known as beewolves was all "that was so million years ago" about it all. A German research team has discovered beewolves were using their own form of antibiotics to protect their nests from germs and fungi long before Fleming came along. Quoting from the Daily Mail article: "The German researchers found that beewolves teamed up with a type of bacteria called Streptomyces in a symbiotic relationship that benefited both species. In exchange for having a home, the bugs produced a cocktail of nine different antibiotics effective against a broad range of harmful bacteria and fungi." Then again, we had Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; since I don't recall any entertaining shows about frontier beewolves, I think we're at least even. [via Presurfer]

How much is that doggy prosthesis in the window?
The author of this column is very obviously a sucker for stories about animals getting a little help from their human friends, and so we couldn't have an all-animal edition without featuring Hoppa the dog. Hoppa was born without front legs, which is very rare for dogs. After four years of making a pretty good go of it on two legs, he has a cool prosthetic device that lets him scoot around more freely. Observe: