[oakenshield]

While it may be tempting to look to nature to draw inspiration for engineering, realize that nature/evolution often makes horrendous engineering "decisions" precisely because it is not intelligently engineered. The most often cited example is the inferior laryngeal nerve in mammals, which is 15 feet longer than necessary for giraffes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve#Evide...