6 modern technologies that are used animals for more than a million years
Humanity is proud of its technology. It seems to us that they elevate us above all other species. However, the analogs of at least some "outstanding" achievements of our science, animals are used when a person on Earth still did not exist ... 1. Termites use of hydrogen energy
While companies and governments spend billions of dollars trying to build a future, based on hydrogen energy, tiny creatures nesmyshlenye use similar technology for millions of years. think, why termites gnaw incessantly our homes? Not from harm. Their bodies - the most that neither is perfect bioreactors. They process the pulp into hydrogen and then use its energy.
From a single sheet of paper is obtained as much as two liters of hydrogen - like performance for a long time we will only dream about. In the body of termite lives about 200 different species of bacteria. Together they make up something like a miniature chemical plant. And this is not the only energy invention of termites. They know how to build buildings ten feet tall with a specific air-conditioning system. During the construction, they somehow take into account the shape of the hill and the location inside the tunnel. As a result, the air circulates in a precision so as to provide ventilation of the strategically important objects (for example, they have a greenhouse where they grow a special fungus.) 2. Cuttlefish are equipped with built-in flat screen
Cuttlefish - the representative of the order of cephalopods. Almost everyone who has teeth (including humans) seems awfully tasty squid. So her to not become extinct, particularly necessary to maneuver. Pride Security cuttlefish - the ability to almost completely merged with the environment. They change color almost instantly. And not only color, but even the structure of the skin. How they do it? They have something like an analog flat screens of our TVs that cover every inch of their bodies. The skin consists of a multi-colored cuttlefish layers, thereby reducing the tiny muscles in on it can appear almost any image - even though Mona Lisa, if necessary. This is not an exaggeration. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other research institutions have created a flat TV screen, based on the principle of cuttlefish skin. It is made of layers of polymers are located, which expand under the influence of different voltage, something like the skin of the cuttlefish. Simplicity and low cost device allows you to karakatitsepodobnogo screen ultra-thin - almost to one micron 3. Do elephants have an idea of Pharmacology
Let's start with the fact that the elephants were treated from time immemorial, that we call a pica - the consumption of earth, ash, dirt and various mineral precipitates. So they got rid of toxins, which could swallow, along with plants. In addition, we know that they use special plants (family Boraginaceae, approx. mixstuff.ru), to expedite delivery. Apparently, this is also some kind of medical procedure, do not undertake argued at one time the South African elephants were on the brink of extinction. They managed to survive only because of what they were eating Ganoderma - is a kind of bracket fungus, which is widely used in Chinese medicine as an anti-cancer and antiviral agent. 4. Spiders invented the diving bell
Imagine for a moment that you have a spider. And that, yielding to the call of a charming mermaids, decided to settle in the water. How do you do?You can not live without air. way out of this position has found Spider-diver who went and built his own submarine. Wove a tight web in the form of a ball, got it in the air and came down into the water. Although Aristotle described something similar in the fourth century, the first man diving bell was built only in the 1535th year. By our standards it is quite a long time, but with a 300-millionnoletnim spider funny experience even compare. 5. Pigeons use the navigation system, which is much older and more perfect than our
Despite his reputation as a foolish bird, who only knows how to shit where not get, a pigeon (especially email) also has one very important advantage - a navigation system, equal to where we have not yet invented. You can take a pigeon, put in the trunk his car and drive hundreds of miles - to places where birds do not have to happen ever. Let go, and she finds his way home. Reported cases, when the pigeons done the way back in 1800 miles. scientists as not only tried to explain this phenomenon, including the theory that pigeons orient themselves in some way on the earth's magnetic fields. During the Second World War, America pulled down a bunch of money on a research project under the code entitled "Project Pigeon", who has studied the use of carrier pigeons in the guidance system. Before the bird exhibited the screen on which the projected image of the terrain, "broadcasted" from the nose guided munitions. From the pigeon was required to peck at the screen with electrical contacts, hold, therefore, the "sights" on the subject. Do they really do not work out. 6. Among the Malaysian ants have suicide bombers
Mandibular glands of Malaysian ant-soldier pulled the entire length of his body. This is no accident. These glands are filled with poison. If such an ant enter into an unequal battle, and at some point realizes that the enemy can not win, he inflates these glands, they explode. An explosion so powerful that the head is completely detached from the body, and poison flies in all directions. So when the invasion of predators if strength is clearly not equal, these ants are waiting until they gather around the enemy and more ... detonate.
