If every time i tried to invent something, how would nature solve it?
...or how did nature solve it?

What is this is how we approached every engineering issue? What would our world look like? What could our world look like?

Janine Benyus, co-founder of The Biomimicry Institute, asked these questions. AskNature is helping inventors find the answer.

In thinking about how biomimicry relates to growing food, it occurs to me that agriculture -- using a complex system of planting, irrigation, harvesting to grow food in one place -- seems like very much a man-made invention. And while we are likely the only species to grow and harvest food in this way,  there are other organisms that have figured out how to direct water, distribute food, survive famine -- other techniques that could revolutionize the way we obtain food. Try searching "grow food" in http://www.asknature.org/ and see what comes up. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. In fact, there are many organisms that have already found the answers we are looking for in cutting edge research.

One of the things that struck me in Janine's TEDtalk was when she shared that her hope is for AskNature to help us "be able to be in touch with...elders that have been their for far, far longer than we have." Human civilizations value learning from our ancestors. We have sayings like, "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," that give credit to those that have come before. Usually we are referring to our human ancestors. But all of our earthly ancestors have something to teach us, something they have learned through generations of expeirience about how to live -- how to thrive -- in our environments.