What do butterfly wings have to do with computer screens? What do birds have to do with high speed trains? These may sound like strange things to put together. But scientists, inventors, and designers are doing just that. They are learning from nature to create new technology. The word biomimicry   combines two words: biology and mimicry. So people using biomimicry try to use examples in nature to design new technology. Biomimicry is not a new idea. People have been studying nature for hundreds of years. Leonardo DaVinci used birds as models to invent his flying machine. And when the Wright Brothers made the first successful airplane, they also studied birds. In 998, Janine Benyus, a natural science writer and teacher, wrote a book about biomimicry. To develop her interest in the subject, Janine Benyus started the Biomimicry Institute. The Biomimicry Institute is a non-profit organization. It brings together scientists, designers, inventors and many other people. It offers classes to teach people biomimicry. It provides money for people to research and test new technologies. And it wants all people, from children to adults, to think about new ways to learn from nature. People involved with the Biomimicry Institute believe that biomimicry can help solve many of the world's problems. Often, new technologies can harm nature, but this is not true for biomimicry. Let's look at some examples. Butterflies have colorful wings because light shines off them in a special way. Scientists want to copy these same ways to make light shine off computers. They hope this will make for more colorful screens. Another example of biomimicry is the bullet train. It travels at speeds of over 250 kilometers per hour! But it had a problem: it made too much noise! Through the observation of birds, scientists thought about a kind of bird, the kingfisher . The kingfisher can dive into water without making any noise because of the shape of its beak . Researchers thought that if they could design the front of the train like this beak, the train would be quieter. Well, it worked! What's the main idea of the text?
Biomimicry is widely used in the world. People copy nature to create new technologies. The Biomimicry Institute was set up for science. Birds play an important part in new technologies.