HAVE you seen a cat jump off a high wall and land safely on its feet? Try doing that yourself and you would know how difficult it is. One of the many things that enables the cat to pull-off this stunt is hidden in its feet and the way it uses them. The cat first lands on its toes and then uses the heel to cushion its fall.

Have you heard of the Jesus Christ Lizard? This too has marvelous feet. This particular lizard can actually run on water without getting drowned. Yes, a lot of insects can do the same, but their body mass is not enough to break the density of water – but the basilisk lizard is pretty big. It is able to run on water by bicycling it legs on top of the water at such an angle that its body rises out of the water on its own.

Without making it sound like useless rants, I would give you one more example. This time it is about the Owl. You can hear the owl hoot but have you ever tried listening to it fly. Probably not. Since, it feeds mostly in the night on prey that have extremely sensitive senses – it has to fly extremely swiftly, without making a sound.

But, why am I talking about animals in a technology publication? This is because two of the above mentioned three feats have already converted into technologies that we use on a daily basis. The third one, is still being experimented upon. Lenovo’s Thinkpad team has learnt from the cat and the owl to make their notebooks more reliable and silent.

Lenovo uses something called the cat’s paw design in their rubber pads that you see in your laptop computers. The seemingly simple part has been inspired by the cat’s feet and helps in reducing shocks the laptop computer. The dual impact system cushions the laptop from crashing when you throw it on the table in rage after a fight with your boss.

But how can the owl be used to make your job easier? Arimasa Naitoh, affectionately called “Father of the Thinkpad”, explained it to us last week. The owl’s feather is structured in a way that it cuts air without making a lot of noise. The tips are curved and cut in a way, by evolution, that they do not make a sound while moving through air. The fans that cool the Thinkpads are designed by taking inspiration from the owl’s feathers.

This includes the shape and the speed at which they rotate. The third example that I took above, of the Jesus Christ lizard, has not been converted into a commercial technology yet. There are experiments underway by Metin Sitti of Carnegie Mellon University. He is trying to imitate the basilisk lizard’s movements in robots that can be used to run on water and help in research and rescue operations.

The next time you are watching National Geographic and see an animal do something extraordinary, look around your home – you may already have something that has been inspired by the way nature works.