Scientists and inventors have often been inspired by the changing designs of nature. “For over a billion years,” Akhlesh Lakhtakia says, “many structures have evolved to display interesting and useful properties. This is an idea we humans should exploit.”

The first phase began with a jar of specimens from the Smithsonian. Submerged in alcohol, the stoneflies were suspended eerily in cotton stoppered vials. The mottled brown insects ranged from puny little quarter inchers that hardly seemed to merit the lengthy scientific names recorded on the outside of their vials to whopping behemoths that threatened to push the alcohol soaked cotton wads clear out.