Buzz
Modern technology has transformed everyday life from a daunting challenge to a breeze. For example, weather apps can give you the temperature instantly, and seeing in the dark is as simple as turning on your phone's flashlight.
How could we possibly achieve this level of accuracy and ease without the aid of electronics and machines? The truth is, nature has already figured out many of these solutions for us.
This isn't about drawing inspiration from nature or genetically altering animals to perform new tasks. Instead, this list highlights surprising traits and abilities from the natural world that can be directly applied to solve problems.
10. Want to Check the Temperature? Listen to Some Crickets
There are many ways to determine the temperature—from checking the thermometer in your desk drawer to watching the weather on the news, or even listening to the crickets outside your house. Believe it or not, you can estimate the temperature with surprising accuracy by counting how many times a cricket chirps within a set time period. This fascinating method was first explained by 19th-century scientist Amos Dolbear, though it was initially noticed by the lesser-known Margarette W. Brooks.
The rate at which a cricket chirps is linked to the temperature of its environment. By counting the number of chirps, you can estimate the temperature. This is believed to be due to crickets' higher metabolism in warmer conditions.
The formula varies depending on the species. For common field crickets, you simply count the chirps in a 15-second period and add 40 to get a reasonably accurate estimate of the temperature in Fahrenheit. For even more precision, use snowy tree crickets, the type studied by Dolbear. Their chirping rate is also less influenced by factors like age.
9. Lost a Tooth? Find a Coconut or Some Milk Immediately
Imagine this: It’s a scorching summer day, you’re cycling along, enjoying the wind in your hair, and everything seems perfect. Suddenly, you hit a pothole, go flying, and crash face-first onto the pavement. You feel something shift in your mouth. What do you do?
If there happens to be a coconut nearby, your best bet is to crack it open and place your loose teeth inside it. A 2007 study revealed that coconut water is an effective medium for storing dislodged teeth, helping preserve the periodontal ligament cells essential for successfully reattaching the tooth.
Coconut water has been shown to outperform milk or saline solution in this regard. However, the study was conducted to evaluate these mediums after the teeth had already been separated for 30 minutes. Still, dentists recommend using milk if it's available.
If you find the idea of using milk to preserve a tooth odd, dentists actually consider it more effective than water. The reason has nothing to do with calcium but is due to the milk’s neutral pH.
Once the tooth is submerged in milk, it should be carefully placed back into its socket to keep it moist. Seek immediate medical attention. One hour is typically the critical window, although a tooth can remain viable for up to six hours.
8. Lost While Hiking? Discover Your Location by Boiling Water
If you've ever been hiking or mountain climbing, you’re familiar with the effects of low air pressure. Breathing becomes more difficult, your vision may blur, people tend to faint more easily, and every step requires more effort. Nature has a clever trick for determining how thin the atmosphere is: boiling water.
By boiling water, you can estimate how high you are above sea level because lower atmospheric pressure causes water to boil at lower temperatures. Generally, every 150 meters (500 feet) of elevation increases the boiling point by 0.56 degrees Celsius (1°F).
With just a flame, a container, some water, and a thermometer, you can figure out your altitude. It’s also useful because boiling or simmering foods take longer at higher altitudes since the cooking temperature is lower. So, if you’re scaling Mount Everest, your daily meal prep will take a little longer each time.
Interestingly, this effect reverses as well, meaning water boils at higher temperatures the deeper you go below sea level. At the Mariana Trench’s deepest point, water would need to reach around 493 degrees Celsius (919 °F) to boil. At Everest's summit, water boils at about 71 degrees Celsius (160 °F). (Note that these are estimates, not precise figures.)
7. Want to Catch a Criminal? Just Look for the Nearest Mosquito
Although mosquitoes aren’t the most beloved creatures, they do have some unexpected perks. Much like in Jurassic Park, blood ingested by a mosquito retains all the properties from its original source, including DNA. Essentially, these insects serve as living blood samples.
Knowing this, Finnish police investigating a sealed crime scene decided to make their only witness the mosquito. The DNA extracted from the insect matched a man already listed in their database, leading to his immediate arrest and questioning. A criminal was caught with the help of a mosquito that had witnessed his crime.
The story of crime-fighting mosquitoes didn’t end there. In 2017, Japanese researchers perfected a method to extract and analyze blood from mosquitoes. Their breakthrough revealed that mosquitoes can preserve identifiable DNA for up to two days.
As a result, blood samples from mosquitoes can be used to estimate when a person was in a particular area. This technique could potentially be used not only to identify suspects but also to approximate the time they were present in a location.
6. Want to Go Fishing? Use Some Walnuts (Though It's Illegal)
Fishing was an essential food source for many Native American tribes. In the 18th century, historian James Adair documented several fishing techniques, such as simple spears and nets, employed by indigenous peoples.
One of the more creative methods involved letting a catfish take the fisherman’s hand into its mouth. The fisherman would then quickly pull the fish onto dry land. A rare and entirely different technique used by certain tribes was chemical warfare.
They used black walnut hulls to catch fish, and although you technically could do the same, you definitely shouldn’t. This practice has been outlawed in many countries because of the severe harm it can inflict on local wildlife.
The walnut husks contain a chemical called saponin. While humans can digest saponin, fish absorb it directly into their bloodstream, which stuns them and causes them to float to the surface, making them easier to catch. It takes a lot of walnuts and is illegal in many states.
5. Want to See in the Dark? Use Some Rotting Fish
Light is so readily available now that we often forget how dark the world once was. Open flames provided the easiest source of light, but they required constant care or costly candles. Even if you could tolerate the hassle, fire came with serious risks. Thankfully, there's a surprising alternative.
In the 18th century, miners in Newcastle, UK, worked in dark, cramped, and dangerous mines, far from the comforts of modern electric lighting. With flammable gas a constant threat, they couldn't use flame lanterns. But nature provided a solution: rotting fish. The bacterial colonies feeding on their decaying skin emitted enough natural light through bioluminescence for miners to see by.
In the United States, miners opted for a slightly more pleasant option—jars filled with fireflies, which didn’t pose the same fire hazards. In 17th-century Indonesia, bioluminescent fungi were used as torches in the dense jungle. During World War II, Japanese soldiers gathered bioluminescent crustaceans to read maps at night without revealing their positions.
4. Want Some Alcohol? Suffocate a Goldfish
The quest for intoxication has been a part of human history since the beginning. Evidence of wine production in Georgia dates back over 8,000 years, highlighting humanity's long-standing focus on this particular priority.
In an unexpected discovery, scientists have found a new source of alcohol: goldfish.
Yes, you read that correctly—goldfish. These small aquatic creatures developed the ability to produce alcohol as a survival mechanism in freezing waters. When a lake freezes, it deprives aquatic life of oxygen. This lack of oxygen leads to a buildup of lactic acid in muscles, eventually becoming toxic. The goldfish, however, counteracts this by producing alcohol to survive the harsh conditions.
The goldfish has developed a clever workaround to its oxygen-deprived environment by transforming stored lactic acid into ethanol, which is then released into the water without causing harm.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool have calculated that it would take about 200 days of a goldfish being confined in a beer glass to produce enough ethanol for a decent pint. While this is hardly a practical brewing method, it’s fascinating to think that with just thousands of goldfish and some cold water, you could eventually create a source of alcohol.
If goldfish brewing isn’t your thing, then perhaps naturally occurring palm wine is more to your liking. Thanks to the yeast in the sap of palm trees, palm wine begins fermenting the instant it’s tapped from the tree.
Within just a few hours, this sap transforms into a drink with the same alcohol content as a mild beer, and after a few days, it turns into something closer to vinegar. Palm wine is enjoyed as a delicacy across the globe, from India to West Africa, and even some chimpanzee groups have been spotted indulging in this naturally fermented beverage.
3. Thirsty? Just Find A Giant Tortoise
Anyone who has ever sipped milk knows that there’s a vast array of animals that provide edible drinks. Almost every mammal produces milk in some form, and if you’re in a pinch, you can even drink blood, much like the Mongols did.
The challenge comes during extended sea journeys when there’s simply not enough room to carry a whole herd of milk-producing animals. Fresh water was also problematic as it would quickly stagnate in the ship’s hold. For a long time, the only viable option was weak alcohol.
However, explorers venturing to the Galapagos Islands discovered a surprising new water source: tortoises.
We’ve already touched on the Galapagos tortoise and its bladder filled with fluid. But we didn’t dive into how this feature became incredibly valuable to certain ship captains.
For example, US Navy Captain David Porter noted the tortoises in his journal. He described how their bladders contained “about [8 liters (2 gal) of] perfectly fresh and sweet” water. Not only that, but these tortoises could go without food for up to 18 months while stored in a ship's hold. They tasted so good that “every other animal food fell greatly in our estimation.”
These creatures were almost perfectly designed to serve as a human lunchbox: savory meat, gallons of fresh water, and a lengthy shelf life—all packed into an animal known for its slow pace and docility. Their shells even made them easy to stack! Sadly, they were too useful for their own good, and the Galapagos tortoise is now a protected species.
2. Soil too polluted? Try doing a little gardening
Heavy industrial activity doesn’t just pollute the global environment, it also contaminates the local area. Metals like mercury and lead are frequently found in the soil surrounding industrial sites, along with pollutants such as arsenic.
These pollutants can wreak havoc on local ecosystems and human health, leading to conditions like kidney damage, anemia, and numerous other health issues. Traditional methods of addressing soil contamination are both costly and largely ineffective.
The modern solution to this wildlife-devastating issue is, unsurprisingly, to bring in more wildlife—specifically plants, fungi, and algae that can perform phytoremediation. This process involves toxic pollutants being absorbed through the root systems of plants like hemp, mustard, or pigweed.
After a set time, the plants are harvested, treated, and replaced with new seeds. Some valuable contaminants, such as cadmium or nickel, can even be extracted from these plants and reused in a technique known as phytomining. In a sense, we’re mining metals using mustard plants.
1. Need flight paths for drones? Just follow the seagulls
Drones are still a rapidly advancing technology, constantly evolving and encountering new challenges. One major obstacle is figuring out the most efficient flight routes, as many variables can influence their journey.
Wind speed, temperature, thermal updrafts, weather, and time of day can all drastically affect the behavior of a flying object. To put it simply, this is a challenging subject to study without investing countless hours of trial and error. That is, unless we take a shortcut and learn from nature.
Researchers in Bristol have studied seagulls to discover how drones might fly most efficiently in urban areas. By observing the flight patterns of seagulls, they gained valuable insight into where wind changes and thermals occur. With this data, they hope to significantly improve a drone's fuel efficiency and extend its flight range.
