Efficient flying and swimming patterns of many organisms are the result of spiralic flows. After observing this fact, this company has produced a spiral shaped rotor. This technology would allow for devices to be smaller, is more energy efficient than current rotors, and is also significantly quieter, compared to current technology such as jet engine turbines which are extremely noisy. This technology also has many applications, as there are many needs for fans, impellers, and pumps in transportation, industries, and residences.

This robot uses rhythmic neural activity to make the spine of the robot oscillate like a salamander. The salamander also serves as an effective model for an amphibious robot. The swaying motion helps for both terrestrial and aquatic locomotion.

The star-nosed mole lives mostly underground, and thus has poorly developed eyes. However, this has also given rise to its ultrasensitive nose. It has 11 pairs of appendages on its nose that are covered with over 25,000 mechanoreceptors. This makes its nose 6 times more sensitive than the human hand and the most sensitive organ throughout the animal kingdom.

This is an article about a tiny animal called the water bear. They're not actually bears, and they are only 0.1-0.5 mm in length. However, they live just about everywhere on earth and can survive even the most extreme conditions (really high temperatures, really low temperatures, really high pressure, etc. They can live up to 120 years without any water and can even survive in space! They are able to this by entering a state of suspended animation; they dehydrate their bodies, which are normally 85% water, down to 2% water and replacing this water with a sugar which keeps its cell membranes intact. This concept could be used to preserve antibiotics without using refrigeration so that they could reach patients without spoiling.

This is a pretty interesting article about how sharks navigate and can detect prey using electroreception. However, I would recommend reading just the first three paragraphs, because after that I think it gets a bit repetitive. Basically, hair cells in sharks can sense electric changes (caused by crossing geomagnetic lines or movement of prey) which travel through ions in seawater and then relay this information to the brain.

This is a pretty short but interesting article about bullet trains in Japan. Although the trains are extremely fast, they were very noisy when coming out of tunnels due to the air pressure difference created when they exited the tunnels at such high speeds. Therefore, engineers designed the nose of the train after the kingfisher's beak because the kingfisher is a bird that can dive into water at high speeds with very little splashing.