Carlyn Kranking

Assistant Editor, Science and Innovation

The natural world is teeming with sources of inspiration for technological advancement. Evolution has shaped fascinating adaptations in animals, making them well equipped to deal with their surroundings. When scientists discover the perfected designs and behaviors of plants and animals, inventors take note, using them as a blueprint for technology that could improve human lives.

This year, scientists fashioned a gel from proteins in snake venom that can help stop uncontrolled bleeding, and a team of engineers built an engine-less Mars glider inspired by the flight of the albatross.

But even more new inventions are in the works that couldn’t have begun without researchers first uncovering something about wildlife. Through examining the genes of jellyfish smaller than a pinky fingernail, mapping the mechanics of an elephant’s trunk and conducting loads of other investigations, researchers have found creative sparks to spur future innovation.

Here are seven scientific discoveries from 2022 that may lead to new inventions down the line.

The secret to an elephant trunk’s dexterity is its skin

The footage revealed that all parts of a trunk do not extend evenly.

Using its trunk, an elephant can smell, communicate, store water, gather food and eat. The appendage can forcibly tear foliage from branches or nimbly pick up a blade of grass. The key, according to research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July, lies in the animal’s wrinkly skin to protect from sunlight.

In an experiment, researchers encouraged two captive African savanna elephants to reach their trunks toward bran cubes and apples. As the elephants maneuvered their dexterous noses, scientists filmed them with a high-speed camera.

The footage revealed that all parts of a trunk do not extend evenly: The folded skin atop the trunk stretches 15 percent farther than the wrinkled underside does. The team confirmed their findings by examining the trunk of an elephant that had died.

This special skin setup is “the elephant’s innovation,” co-author Davi, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a statement. But human engineers have tended to overlook this concept while developing soft robots.

“In order to have these complex movements, you need these structures on the outside,” Andrew Schulz, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech and co-author of the study, told New Scientist’s Clare Wilson in July.

People working on such robots should experiment with the material their technology is wrapped in, experts say. In this way it can understandable, innovators could create machines that more accurately replicate the dynamics of an elephant’s trunk.

Through examining the genes of jellyfish smaller than a pinky fingernail, mapping the mechanics of an elephant’s trunk and conducting loads of other investigations, researchers have found creative sparks to spur future innovation.

Here are seven scientific discoveries from 2022 that may lead to new inventions down the line.