Animal technology and human engineering

What do whale's tales and car radiators have in common? Or jumping fleas and Roman catapults? Or how about giraffe necks and keeping your basement dry? And, of course, everybody knows about albatrosses and sailplanes. That's an easy one.
wings of albatross and sailplane

     This is the section where we look at the amazingly clever mechanisms and *"technologies" animals use to make things work for themselves. And we also look at similar technologies devised by human engineers to make things work for us humans.
    The same old themes of the continuously flowing and changing Mysterious Everything, and rules of design apply.

     As you will surely remember from reading the answer to the first question in the "Ask Dr. Galapagos" section, all living things and human created things have to obey the same laws - the laws of nature, that is - like "Newton's Laws of Motion", and the "First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics" (my personal favorites), and "What goes up, must come down", well okay, that's not one, except for certain situations. But the "Law of Gravity" is definitely one.

     And ignorance of the law is no excuse. But don't fret. If you feel a little bit ignorant, you're in good company. We'll keep it simple and explain as we go. If you get really interested, and we know you will, we'll tell you where to find more information and get really smart.

     Our first stuff is all about the amazing little flea and catapults and bows and arrows and elastic materials and, of course, it's all still really about energy changes. So jump if you dare over to the next two pages, and find out all about Fleas, Catapults, and Bows and Arrows.

*I've got to use quote marks around the word technologies, because some nit-picky person is sure to write in and complain about the use of the word technology when discussing animal and plant mechanisms. Technology, they will say only applies to what humans do. So now we can say, "look, we put the word in quotes". --Dr. Galapagos




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