now going throughits paces by tracing the movement of a flashlight waving thirty feet away inthe darkness.A hundred yards away,unseen by the man,a rattlesnake sliding
between the stonessenses a patch of warmth. Although the snake's mechanism is small enough to bepacked into a head the size of a nut,it can detect a change in temperature
of one-thousandth ofa degree.With a sound the snake closes in and strikes for the kill.
Whenever we look inthe animal world we find the same story.Almost anything that man can do,naturehas already done better. So,it is for the purpose of learning from nature
that a new sciencecalled bionics has grown up.Its aim is to find out how animal's instrumentswork so that man can copy them for his own purpose.
Imagine being ableto know a friend several miles off by his smell. Male silk moths can do this.Their antennae are so sensitive to the chemical odor of female moths that they
can detect theirpresence by picking up only one molecule of the chemical.Even with their mostsensitive instruments, human cannot approach this perfection.
Studying beetle'seyes has already paid off. A group of scientists in
finding out how abeetle accomplishes this scientists built a machine that operated on the sameprinciple.This instrument is able to determine the ground speed of moving
aircraft with a highdegree of accuracy.
A.Studying the eyeof the beetle has helped scientists to measure speed of objects.
B.Male silk mothscan know female silk moths several miles off by their smell.
C.Devices of animalsdiscussed here serve a purpose similar to the skin of the human.
D.The military usesof bionics are one for developing this science.