Nature’s safety foam

My son and I visited a butterfly pavilion about six weeks ago. It was beautiful, and full of flutterbys with blue, brown, yellow, orange and green wings.  We bought a praying mantis pod and a Luna moth cocoon in the hope we would share some spring action, and add useful insects into our yard.

The Luna moth did not emerge, I think due to the exceptionally bizarre transition we had from winter to spring in NY this year. But the mantis hatching was amazing.

We had a couple of hundred of the tiny fellows come out of

Can you see the little guy?

Can you see the little guy?

their pod, and we released them in our backyard.  I hope they find good foraging and keep our area free-er of pests. Even tiny, they are still regal.

We were not only fascinated by the hatching, but by the pod itself.  Being curious, we decided to take it apart and see what we could see.  It was an amazing feat of engineering, with hundreds of tiny little spaces for the manti, all protected by a many-celled foam-like encapsulation, under the final few layers of Tyvek-strong natural paper wrapping.

We cut through the pod to see the structure.

We cut through the pod to see the structure.

We could not flatten this pod, it was too strong.  These little creatures were safe and sound, no matter how a plant branch would swing.  They were even well-protected from frost with so many cells of air to insulate them.

If we could create natural foam like this…calling all biomimicry innovators!

 

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