With a microscopist at the helm, we soared over the surface of the thorny devil's skin like a deep-space probe orbiting a distant planet, dipping down now and then at Parker's request to explore some curious feature of the terrain. There seemed to be little of interest in the Matterhornlike macrostructure of an individual thorn, though Parker speculated that it might wick away heat from the lizard's body or perhaps help capture the morning dew. Halfway down the thorn, however, he noticed a series of nodules set in rows, which seemed to grade down to a larger water-collection structure. Finally we dove into a crevasse at the base of the thorn and encountered a honeycomb-like field of indentations, each 25 microns across.

"Ah-ha!" Parker exclaimed, like Sherlock Holmes alighting upon a clue. "This is clearly a superhydrophobic surface for channeling water between the scales." A subsequent examination of the thorny devil's skin with an instrument called a micro-CT scanner confirmed his theory, revealing tiny capillaries between the scales evidently designed to guide water toward the lizard's mouth. "I think we've pretty well cracked the thorny devil structure," he said. "We're ready to make a prototype."

Enter the engineers. As the next phase in his quest to create a water-collection device inspired by the lizard, Parker sent his observations and experimental results to Michael Rubner and his MIT colleague Robert Cohen, a chemical engineer with whom he has worked on several biomimetics projects in the past. Rubner and Cohen are neatly groomed gentlemen who speak in clipped phrases and look frequently at their watches. While Parker likes to explain his work via a stroll through a botanic garden or by pulling out drawerfuls of bright beetles in a museum, they are more likely to draw a tidy graph of force over time, or flip through a PowerPoint presentation on their laptop. But a pooling of biological insight and engineering pragmatism is vital to success in biomimetics, and in the case of Parker, Cohen, and Rubner, it has led to several promising applications inspired by the Namib beetle and other insects. Using a robotic arm that, in a predetermined sequence, dips slides into a series of nanoparticle suspensions and other exotic ingredients, they have assembled materials layer by layer that have the same special properties as the organisms. Soon they hope to apply the method to create a synthetic surface inspired by thorny devil skin.

Though impressed by biological structures, Cohen and Rubner consider nature merely a starting point for innovation. "You don't have to reproduce a lizard skin to make a watercollection device, or a moth eye to make an antireflective coating," Cohen says. "The natural structure provides a clue to what is useful in a mechanism. But maybe you can do it better." Lessons from the thorny devil may enhance the water-collection technology they have developed based on the microstructure of the Namib beetle, which they're working to make into water-harvesting materials, graffiti-proof paints, and self-decontaminating surfaces for kitchens and hospitals. Or the work may take them in entirely new directions. Ultimately they consider a biomimetics project a success only if it has the potential to make a useful tool for people. "Looking at pretty structures in nature is not sufficient," says Cohen. "What I want to know is, Can we actually transform these structures into an embodiment with true utility in the real world?"