The Accidental Inventions That We’re All Grateful For

Nature is amazing. Organisms have come up with incredibly clever ways to solve problems over the vast history of the earth, and sometimes research by humans just involves looking at what nature does and trying to replicate it in a lab.

And one example of this is Velcro. In the 1940s, a Swiss scientist named George de Mestral was pulling burrs from his dog’s fur when he decided to take a look at the burr under the microscope. Looking at all of the little hooks on the bird gave him the idea to develop Velcro, which uses similar tiny hooks to hold two pieces of fabric together.