- A new type of medical staple that had two barbed tips would require much less effort to place, Karp figures, and the gripping power of the barbs would hold it in position without needing to bend the staple.
Karp says he anticipates making the new staples out of biodegradable material so they will fully dissolve over time without having to be removed.
The challenge now is to recreate the full barb's shape.
"Nature has designs that humans can't achieve yet, at least at large scale," Karp says. "Large scale manufacturing is a human problem."
I once watched a really interesting documentary on bioengineering that talked about how engineers were turning to nature for inspiration on how to design everything from trains to hvac systems. One of the people being interviewed said something to the effect of "We'd be smart to study how nature solves various problems. Evolution is basically millions of years of research and development."
Do you happen to know what the doc was called? sounds interesting...