We’ve all watched ants go about their business. They scurry along the ground or up walls, busying themselves with transporting all sorts of things back to their nest. Every so often though you’ll see them stop and begin cleaning themselves, rubbing their antennae vigorously for quite a while before they continue the task at hand. If you’re like me you thought that was a pretty simple thing, all animals need to keep themselves clean, but that simple process belies some incredible evolutionary adaptations that ants have. Indeed as the video shows these adaptations are so advanced that replicating them could provide some benefits for the semiconductor industry.
This translation of evolutionary adaptations being translated to technical applications is called biomimicry and has played a pivotal role in technological development for quite a while. Some of the most notable examples include the development of velcro which takes inspiration from the hooks present on burs which allowed them to attach to an animal’s fur in order to spread their seed over a greater distance. The combo that the ants have could prove useful for semiconductors which are very susceptible to contamination, with other potential applications at the micro scale that require similar filtration and cleaning.
Isn’t it amazing what millions of years of evolution can come up with!
