Abstract
The animal kingdom is packed with talent surpassing that of humans. A bloodhound's sense of smell, for example, is so keen that it can detect a fugitive's scent days later and distinguish it from those of dozens of innocents that may have travelled the same path in the meantime. Rattlesnakes and other pit vipers can discern and home in on the body heat of their prey, even with their other senses masked. A variety of creatures can perceive sounds beyond the normal range of human hearing. Little wonder, then, that engineers often extend into these natural characteristics to solve human problems. After all, evolution has been fine-tuning animals and their senses for countless generations: why not take advantage of a ready-made design? As technology advances, life-mimicking, or biomimetic, solutions are increasingly the answer to a variety of challenges. In the coming decade, such innovations could yield improvements in everything from hearing aids and sonar to bomb-sniffing sensors.
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