Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

One lesson from this video is that nature has answers to lots of our conundrums that we tend to go about solving in the hardest or worst way possible. The speaker also teaches that different organisms even from different species can learn from each other. Finally, one takes away from this video that humans need to rely more on nature.

The speaker gives lots of examples to support her topic. She also speaks towards the audience, not towards the slide show. She uses comparisons on the slide show that are visually appealing, e.g. comparing the black, bumpy skin of a beetle that collects water from fog to the black, bumpy black walls of a building that collects water from fog.  Finally, she gesticulates often.

The speaker’s presentation style is somewhat formal, and serious, though it is not grave or sad. She makes use of the slideshow behind her, but it is not the driving force of the talk. Rather, she uses it as an organizer, then expands on the ideas shown by the pictures.

This video matters because it teaches a concept that could solve lots of problems around the world: that nature has provided better, cleaner, more efficient ways of doing things than we have thought up ourselves. I will find this concept important soon, because I will see more and more of these nature-based solutions as I grow older, and I may find ways to apply it, on no matter what scale, to my life.  This concept can be applied to education, first of all because it should be taught in schools, but also because learning how animals learn and are motivated is a great way to decide how to teach children. For example, in Daniel Pink’s book Drive, monkeys solved puzzles just because they thought it was fun, not because they got a reward. Finally, this video applies to the world. One effect this kind of thinking has been having on the world is the introduction of cleaner, greener, more efficient ways of doing things like desalination and wind farming. Also, this reliance on nature makes the world in general more hesitant to destroy nature because they would destroy with it its enormous benefits on human kind.