Episode Summary: Over billions of years, nature has amassed an extensive amount of knowledge. In this conversation on biomimicry, the hosts share some fascinating findings. They explore tactics developed by other living organisms, including plants, animals, and fungi, which have enabled these organisms to evolve, adapt, and thrive on our planet.

In this selected segment, Brian explains how camel nostrils might inspire energy-efficient cooling for buildings.

Want to listen to the full episode? You can get it here

To listen to the BBC show: 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter

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Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Brian Tormey, Kristina Horning and Leekei Tang

Brian is a Real Estate Title Insurance Professional and Goat Farmer in the US. 

Kristina is working on design theory and likes to use the design process in everything. Currently in Prague (where she is originally from) and her base is the US

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France. 

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

. And those detriments gets

released when the CLO gets washed.

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Yeah, correct.

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Into the water stream.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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In the water streams.

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And that ends up in, you

know, in, in waterways.

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Yeah.

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I love it.

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That's a great one.

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Wow.

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Well, I think I, I've got one more that

I, you know, again, as it, any of our

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listeners I'm sure can sort of tell,

like, this is a, a favorite topic for me.

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Andel, um, I don't know, growing up on

a farm with all these different animals

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and, and like, I think that's just part

of where like my love of, of seeing

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things and like figuring out how to like

reuse the idea in another way comes from.

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So, uh, this, uh, while I grew up

on a farm and we had a variety of

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animals, we never had camels, but

I wanna talk about some cool things

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coming out of camels or rather in and

out of camels and how that happens.

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And again, a huge shout out and

thanks to the 30 animals that

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made a smarter podcast, you all,

everyone please go check it out.

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The link will be in the show notes.

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Um, it's a phenomenal podcast.

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I'm sure you'll enjoy

it, uh, as much as I do.

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So camels, they also

happen to be remnants.

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Um, so, uh, they also go through

an interesting digestion process.

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But instead of talking about that

today, I wanna talk about actually

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how they breathe through their nose.

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And the way they breathe

through their nose.

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You know, while we humans as mammals

have sort of, you know, principally

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two main breathing, uh, passageways,

the camels have these sort of very

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bif, not a bifurcated means too, like,

like these mini different pathways that

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move through their, their nostrils.

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So that, um, in summary, and I'm not

doing this perfect, uh, justice, but in

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summary, as air moves in, Hot desert air.

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The air moves across, um, uh, wet

mucus membrane, a whole series of

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different pathways, mini sort of little

mini nostril branches that move up

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through, um, the, the camel's snout.

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And it moves across this wet mucus

membrane section that has little,

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uh, hairs and things that sort

of create a ton of surface area

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that the air is moving across.

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And because it's moist,

A few things happen.

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One, the moisture, uh, in the

nostril is converted into, uh,

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moisture in the air, the hot dryer

that's coming in from the desert.

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That creates a cooling effect, right?

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Just like when we sweat and our

sweat is evaporated into the air,

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that evaporative effect creates a

cooling effect that helps cool down.

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The, uh, the air and helps cool

down that they're breathing in.

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So it's coming in hot.

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The air is getting cool

as it goes through.

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It's actually also cooling down the

flesh nearby, which is where the blood

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is flowing, past that, up to the brain.

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So it helps keep their brain extra cool.

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So to keep it an optimal operating

temperature, which for brains

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is even more important than

most of the rest of your organs.

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And so that one thing

that's awesome happens.

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So the air is cooled down

as it goes down into the.

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Camel's lungs and chest cavity.

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And then as they exhale, so that

air is now both humidified, so it's

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not drying out the lungs and it's

cooled down, so it's not heating up

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their inner chest cavity as much.

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And then as the exhale goes through

different pathway where there's a whole

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process in this part, without getting

into the science, I won't explain as well,

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but it's essentially doing the reverse.

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And it passes it through again, a high

surface area process where they've got a,

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a sort of series of, um, things happening

in the nostril that is absorbing that

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water back out of the exhale breast.

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So if we all think about for a minute,

like being in a cold, wintry kind

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of location and you breathe out and

you see that big sort of what looks

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like a steam cloud, it's a water

vapor cloud as you breathe out.

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Cuz when we exhale it's very humid.

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And then that is getting chilled quickly

in the air and turns into this like cloudy

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thing in front of us in, in cold weather.

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So camels as they are exhaling,

are recapturing up to 70% of that

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moisture that they're, that normally

we as a human, that would all be

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exhaled as lost moisture, which is

a significant amount of where the

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water we drink, right Here's my water.

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As we drink water and we hydrate our

body, we lose a lot of it through.

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Respiration through how we breathe

out and losing our moisture that way.

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And it's not all through

perspiration, sweating.

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So there are some people in, in

leaky, this is like a, an interesting

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sort of compliment to this.

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There can be for some kinds

of biomimicry and technology,

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lots of, um, tech, different

technologies needed to come together.

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As you were describing to help

execute on that biomimicry, right?

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Like nanoscale, construction,

printing, cutting, like that.

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There's a whole level of many

other technologies that have to be

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developed and perfected to achieve

that biomimicry in this case.

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Part of what I love about this, uh,

example is there are, um, some architects

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who were experimenting with this concept.

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And they were doing it with very

simple little boxes where they

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essentially created airflow book two

directions, like inhaling and exhaling.

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Then again, in the interest of

time, go check out the pod, the

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other podcast for the full context.

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But here what they did is they basically

proved using just uh, uh, you know,

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physical construction materials and.

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Things like water dripping on burlap,

you know, to recreate this process flow.

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And they were able to demonstrate

very quickly that, oh, we can recreate

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this, uh, uh, example of how physics

is working to both as air comes in.

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Cool it, and then as it goes back out,

take back out that moisture as it as it

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leaves the, you know, in this case a box.

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And so they played around with it.

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It worked.

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They used, they put some things up

on the south side of buildings there

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in, um, somewhere in the Middle East.

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I don't remember the country

it was in at the time.

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And so they went through this

process very interesting.

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And now they're starting to deploy this

already in like full scale buildings that

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are being built where they're creating.

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An exhale part of the building up

high in the roof where the air is

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moving naturally through convection,

up and out of the building, but

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they're recapturing moisture, but

then down in a different area.

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They're breathing in outside

external hot dry air, but going

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through this cooling process.

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Right, which.

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For me growing up, like these were

sometimes sort of called swamp coolers.

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That was like a, a phrase for sort of

using water to, uh, the evaporation of

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water, to cool air, but it's this specific

methodology of how they're doing it that's

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creating cool air, coming into a building

with no, without pumps, air conditioning,

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condensation, electricity, like all these

things, you know, are, it's not consuming

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nearly as much energy to cool a building.

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And so places in location, hot locations

like Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi, or all

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throughout, you know, this sort of very

hot and dried parts of the world, can

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look to this new technology in their

architecture inspired by the inhalation

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and exhalation of the camel nostril.

126

Um, so coming to a building

near you, camel nostril cooled

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air, this is fascinating.

128

I, uh, Yeah, I, I was familiar with

the swamp coolers, but for me, what's

129

really interesting is the retaining

moisture in, uh, from the air because I

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was escaping and that reminded me there

was, uh, exhibition while ago by Bruce

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Mao and called Massive Change and one

of the pieces in that exhibition, It

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was very large, almost like a beehive

that you can put in the desert and

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it will create about half a gallon or

a gallon of water in Sahara Desert.

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And so I was thinking, oh,

that's, that's where the capture

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of the, that's interesting.

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Fascinating.

137

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I think that nature is really cool.

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There's so much we can learn from

Mother Nature, and I really think that

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we can make so many more interesting

conversations on the topic of biomimicry.

142

Yeah, we should do that again.

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Really?

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I think so.

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I think, yeah, I think you're right.

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Lakey.

147

We've got, we've gotta revisit this one.

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There's so many more things out there.

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Yeah.

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Well, and maybe we list, we ask

our listeners, you know, what

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are their examples of Biore that

they've seen in their lives?

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Or that they're dabbling

with in their professional or

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experimental side of their life.

154

Um, yeah, maybe, maybe we'll learn

about some new things from our

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listeners and if they want to talk

about this on the show, they'll welcome.

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Yeah.

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Welcome to the conversation.

158

Well, this has been a lot of fun.

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Thank you for suggesting

this topic, leaky.

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Was it you that suggested

this one, Christina?

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Where's Christina?

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Oh, Christina, thank you.

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What a great one.

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That's my, one of my favorite design

pieces in all different design theories,

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so we should definitely do a sequel.

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Great.

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Well, thanks everybody.

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Thank you.

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Bye.

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Thank you.

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Bye.

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Bye-bye.

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