What You’ll Find

The AskNature site consists of several sections:

  • Biological Strategies: 1,700+ profiles of specific ways living things have met various challenges
  • Innovations: profiles of successfully implemented projects informed by biomimicry
  • Educational Resources: tools for teachers and students to learn about and begin practicing biomimicry themselves
  • Collections: thoughtful essays that identify a theme, trend, or pattern emerging among various biological strategies and innovations

There are a few main ways to interact with them:

  • Search: At the top of any page simply enter a question or keywords that address the problem you’re looking to solve or the technology you’re looking to learn more about.
  • Navigate by Function: From search results or profile pages, drill in to see other profiles that perform the same function, such as “Move in/on Liquids” or “Capture Prey.”
  • Navigate by Living System: From search results or Biological Strategy pages, drill in to see other profiles from the same or closely related organisms, such as “Vertebrates” or “Flowering Plants.”
  • Navigate by Sector: From search results or Innovation pages, drill in to see other profiles from industry, business, and community activity areas, such as “Infrastructure” or “Software.”
  • Navigate by Grade Level, Subject Area, and more: From search results or in some cases directly from Educational Resource pages, drill in to see other profiles appropriate for students and classes with various needs and standards.

What’s New

You can see already that we’ve given AskNature a complete visual overhaul. The changes though are more than skin-deep. This evolution involves:

  • Completely re-written pages with greater detail, more context, and ideas for inspiration
  • Custom scientific illustrations that use visuals where words don’t say enough
  • New backend organization that allows you to navigate up and down branches of the tree of life to make new connections and comparisons between species and entire families of living things

Which Way Is the Best Way?

Every member of the AskNature community brings their own questions, goals, skills, and preferences. We have designed the site to mimic aspects of nature itself, to be one rich and layered environment that can provide for many different inhabitants and experiences.

On Ask Nature, you don’t read about explorers. On AskNature, you are the explorer.