Nature will provide the answers when you learn to ask the right questions.
Through online tools, we give learners, designers, and problem-solvers the skills they need to turn nature’s strategies into solutions.
Our Approach

We present cutting-edge discoveries and age-old knowledge of nature in simple language that any problem-solver can understand and apply to their challenge.

We offer high-quality, engaging content free of charge to empower learners of all ages and backgrounds to address environmental and social issues with nature-inspired solutions.

Our goal is to enable everyone, everywhere to see other living things through a respectful and curious lens that reveals how they work, and how they work together.
AskNature
AskNature is the largest open access library of biological strategies for sustainable design solutions, allowing people of any age and background to learn from nature. It is a digital field guide to the natural world, designed to inspire you to understand what we can learn from nature (not just what we can learn about it). We have designed this tool to provide guidance to students, educators, engineers, scientists, designers, artists, naturalists, and those from yet-to-be-defined disciplines. Our hope is that this is a homecoming for anyone searching for ideas about how to make the future better for all of our planetary neighbors.
Search for biological strategies crafted by an expert team of science communicators that reveal adaptations from other living organisms that human innovators can translate into design. Explore curated Collections, Educational Resources, and Innovations containing examples of biomimicry in application.
Featured Collection:
How Does Nature Teach and Learn?
Education isn’t just about memorization, but practicing into mastery. Looking to other species, we see that long‑term success is all about incorporating new knowledge into your very being. View the collection here.
Biomimicry Toolbox
Creating intentional design for products, processes, and services with nature in mind requires insight into how these would function in nature without human influence. The Biomimicry Toolbox provides an orientation to biomimicry and introduces a set of tools and core concepts that can help problem-solvers from any discipline begin to incorporate insights from nature into their solutions.
We hope this resource offers a pathway to generate creative solutions inspired by nature so more learners and designers can think with this perspective, thereby inserting their cleverness after gaining this wisdom so they are better equipped to solve systemic environmental and societal challenges.
Featured Resource:
The Biomimicry Design Spiral
The Biomimicry Taxonomy is a classification system the Biomimicry Institute developed to organize biological strategies by the functions they serve. It is also the underlying structure for AskNature, the world’s most comprehensive library (in database form) of biological solutions applicable to human design challenges. Learn more here.
Solutions
From middle and high schoolers in design challenges to successful startups from around the world, we work with an array of emerging innovators to hone and advance their nature-inspired solutions addressing today’s most pressing problems.
Browse the products and concepts of the finalists from our programs, and filter them by a number of qualities, including program, location, and even the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressed. Explore the variety of ideas from each program, locations represented, as well as the many U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressed.
We hope these solutions inspire you to support these innovators—or perhaps begin your journey in creating a nature-inspired solution to see it featured here.
Featured Solution:
The SINC
Many communities in Northern Canada suffer from a lack of clean drinking water, and this issue of water insecurity disproportionately affects Indigenous Canadians. Inspired by the countercurrent heat exchange system found in trout and the beard lichen’s water collection process, the SINC (Sustainable Ice Nucleation Contraption) is an outdoor water collection system designed for northern communities affected by water scarcity. Learn more here.
“AskNature is user-friendly, packed with interesting information for students, scholars, and regular audiences, and aesthetically pleasing. Nat Geo watch out!”
– Karuna Skariah, NBCT, educator, National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow
Support the Next Generation
of Nature-Inspired Innovators
By donating to the Biomimicry Institute, you help us empower more nature-inspired innovators. Together, we will build a strong and sustainable global community dedicated to eliminating the need for extractive industries and revitalizing degraded ecosystems.