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So much for technology
Biomimicry is an attempt to mold technology on nature.
It is said that one of its early successes was when a
Swiss inventor noted cockleburs stuck to his wool trousers
when he was taking a walk, after which he developed Velcro.
Here you will read about a fly that inspired a silicon
design that should be used by the U.S. military to catch
the "future Osama Bin Ladens of the world."
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Now The New York Times Magazine publishes
in its issue of January 13, 2002 that Ron Hoy of Cornell
and Daniel Robert of the University of Bristol discovered
an amazing fact about a rare fly , the Ormia ochracea:
unlike most flies the Ormia has two tiny ears on its
belly and it has an incredible accurate hearing mechanism,
that it has developed probably through the evolutionary
necessity to pinpoint the location of chirping crickets,
on whose bodies the female Ormia deposits her larvae
(which then consume the said cricket) to propagate.
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The Ormia has two eardrums, and the one closer to the
sound vibrates more loudly than the other, detecting a
noise´s direction within one or two degrees. The
NYT Magazine informs that the problem with most hearing
aids that fit discreetly inside the ear is that they don´t
let you "focus" your listening, so the sounds
coming from the front of the listener are louder than
those coming from his/her sides and back. So Miles has
already created a silicon design based on the fly´s
uncanny ability to extract the direction of a sound, "which
will be ready for the masses by 2005".
As this article is unabashedly based on the NYTM, let´s
cite at lenght its last paragraph: "But even before
the fly-inspired design hit the market, the U. S. military
is likely to benefit. It is hoping to drop from the air
marshmallow-size directional listening devices over enemy
terrain to reveal virtually every whisper, gunshot or
footstep in the area, as well as each sound´s directions
relative to each device. A cluster of them would be able
to detect the origin of sounds through triangulation and
then wirelessly transmit the information back to a listening
station". Or as it is said in the first paragraph:
"...tiny microphones that might help catch the future
Osama bin Ladens of the world".
Related news:
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?>
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