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Journalism of Courage
I recently found out that during its lifespan of 65 years, the first generation well-loved Volkswagen Beetle (of which over 21 million were made) underwent over 78,000 ‘incremental’ changes and improvements in its design. And it immediately struck me that Mother Nature’s engineering departments also work in much the same way, something Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace discovered and called the ‘theory of evolution.’
And it seemed like all of Mother Nature’s engineering departments – be they chemical, biological, mechanical, electrical, solar, structural and visual worked in harmony to give an end product that was better than the previous one and more suited to survival amidst cut-throat competition and worsening environmental conditions. If you failed her quality control tests, you went extinct. Let’s take a random look at some of Nature’s engineering marvels.
Take chemical engineering. Snake venom evolved from saliva whose main purpose is to digest and make ready for digestion, food – and, of course, make things easier to swallow. Bit by bit, in tiny incremental stages, the saliva became venomous. Now, when injected by hypodermic-like fangs –structural engineering enters the picture – it helped kill the victim. Not only that, depending on the species of snake, the venom became further specialised. There’s venom which destroyed tissue and flesh, that which attacked red blood cells, which messed up and paralysed the nervous system, and that which did a mix and match of these. Nature’s chemical engineering department knew it was on to a good thing, because several other creatures, from spiders and box jellyfish to Komodo dragons, each developed their own special venom to tackle their prey.
The astonishing sense of smell that some animals have – like dogs, sharks and pigs – are also products of her chemical engineering department, wherein molecules are sniffed out and send messages (electrically) to the brain as to whether it is friend or foe or something delicious to eat.
As far as electrical engineering was concerned, Nature surpassed herself because nearly every living creature depends on tiny pulses of electricity for almost every activity. Electric pulses in the brain help us think, move, evade pain and when these circuits malfunction or short, we have seizures and strokes. And these circuits are getting better and better (though some may quite legitimately argue otherwise when it comes to us humans) which is why we now walk upright, can think and imagine, and make 78,000 incremental improvements to the Beetle and now develop devices which we believe will think and imagine better than we can. At a more in-your-face level, there are creatures which use electricity directly – like the electric eel, which can produce enough volts to stun a horse.
As for acoustic engineering – the use of sound – many animals such as bats and dolphins – use ultrasound to either hunt or communicate or evade being eaten. Others, like owls have developed incredible hearing – they can pick up the faintest sound, even if it emanates from deep under snow. Whales may even use sound as an acoustic weapon while rounding up shoals of sardines – stunning them by sound or simply by slapping their huge tails against the water.
Easily Nature’s biggest achievement (worth multiple Nobel Prizes) comes from her solar energy department, where she has developed plant cells called chloroplasts (chlorophyll) which take light energy (photons) from the sun to break down carbon dioxide and water vapour to make food, while giving out oxygen as a ‘waste’ product – such a neat tie-up between her solar energy department and chemical energy department.
Her mechanical and structural engineering departments also worked seamlessly together to benefit the recipient to the maximum. Thus, birds of prey, like falcons and eagles developed incredible eyes – picking out rabbits from 2 km away, as well as a light framework, and streamlined feather-design needed to enable it to home in on its victim at over 300 kmph. The bones of most birds are structured to form a light, hollow framework. Here, too, Nature’s aerodynamic engineering department surpassed itself, streamlining the body shape to ensure minimum resistance and maximum lift. This was even adapted in creatures living underwater – most fish are as streamlined as birds. And her aerodynamic engineering department, clearly ‘thought out of the box’ while developing ‘unsteady aerodynamic’ technology to enable insects to fly.
Of course, the R & D goes on, as animals and birds race to outwit each other, because in most cases it’s all about sheer survival: Thus gazelles and impala must develop the physical prowess to just outrun the cheetah. Each surviving member has just that tiny incremental physical improvement that enables it to outrun its predator – and pass on the know-how to its progeny. Similarly, a cheetah with just that little bit extra in speed and agility will succeed in making a kill and pass on that know-how to its cubs.
Of course, all these improvements occur over very long periods of time, and sometimes, conditions arise (such as asteroids that are not looking where they are headed), which can exterminate most living creatures either in an instant or over a period of years. At the moment we’re playing the role of those asteroids as we continue to destroy our planet in unseemly haste.
There’s one rule that all of Nature’s engineering departments adhere to very strictly, which again we have shamefully ignored: There shall be no waste; everything is to be recycled – whether it is excreta, or rotting bodies, or even such ‘indigestible’ substances such as cellulose and keratin. Everything is broken down into its component parts and reused again, and again. And so the world goes round and round!
