The very same evolution-driven characteristics that enable birds to glide effortlessly through the air can be applied to everything from drones to bullet trains to make them faster, lighter, more nimble and all around cooler looking. Avian-inspired aircraft with nature’s most aerodynamic silhouettes, cars with frames modeled on bird skeletons, gull wing fighter jets and even the U.S. military’s current B2 Spirit Bomber look to the skies for design and performance improvements.

Yamaha with Swan Wing-Shaped Paneling

With an overall design inspired by flowing garments on a high fashion runway, the Yamaha 04GEN scooter concept has an elegant birdlike frame and two transparent body panels modeled on the wings of the swan. The likeness is especially evident when the panels are flipped up. The experimental concept model was unveiled at the first Vietnam Motorcycle Show in Ho Chi Minh City, and there’s no word as to whether it will actually go into production.

Lockheed Stratoliner

Designer William Black created the Lockheed Stratoliner in tribute to the bar-tailed Godwit, a bird that holds the record for traveling the farthest without a single stop (7,258 miles.) Designed for long distances, it uses four cryogenic hydrogen turbofans as its engines, emitting zero pollution. The oversized wings and swooping body come straight from the Australian wading bird, as well. Considering that hydrogen-powered flight is still far off from being a reality on such a large scale, this is destined to remain a concept for the indefinite future.

Kingfisher-Inspired Shinkansen Bullet Train

Engineer Eiji Nakatsu, a general manager of the technical development department for Japan’s high-speed bullet trains, also happens to be a birdwatcher, and not just by coincidence. He realized studying the flight of birds could help make trains faster and lighter, pushing the boundaries of innovation in his field. The typical train nose design was creating incredibly loud sonic booms as it emerged from tunnels, and needed some tweaking. Nakatsu recalled the way a kingfisher’s scoop-like beak enables it to dive into water at high speed with barely a splash, and applied the same shape to the train, eliminating the noise problem and enabling it to run at higher speeds.

Swan Plane, Chicken Aircraft & Seagull Jets by Alex Brady

An odd swan-shaped plane, seagull-inspired fighter jets and an aircraft that combines the forms of chickens and dragons are among the fantastical aircraft concepts by British artist Alex Brady. Admitting that they’re 100 percent whimsical, Brady isn’t too concerned about the opinions of experts, who have noted that these creations couldn’t fly without the invention of new propulsion systems. His other designs take inspiration from manta rays, warthogs, wood lice, porpoises and even a pterodactyl.

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Bird Biomimicry In Action 12 Avian Inspired Jets Drones Cars

Looking as if it’s being pushed up out of the ground it stands upon – or perhaps sinking back into the earth – the Lanyang Museum in Yilan County, Taiwan echoes the sharpness and solidity of the rock formations with which it is surrounded. Designed by Artech Architects, the museum feels like a natural extension of the land, yet maintains a sense of drama.

Located near the Wushih Port, a once-busy harbor that has now turned into wetlands, the Lanyang Museum is a tribute to the area’s past and present. Outside, the museum takes inspiration from the geological formations of the site. Inside, it contains exhibits that reflect the area’s cultural history.

Made of granite and cast aluminum panels, the exterior of the building mimics the reef’s natural erosion process as it is changes with exposure to the weather, and subtly evokes the cuesta ridges of the landscape. Cuesta ridges are formed when sedimentary rock strata tilt over time, exposing the edges of each layer. The way the building emerges from the land is a direct representation of this kind of formation.

Approaching the museum, visitors may have a sense that when they walk inside, everything will be tilted. Passing through the large glass volume, which serves as a day-lit lobby and restaurant area, they enter the deeper, more solid volumes, which give the sense of going underground. Voids located within this exhibit area offer lots more daylight and another chance to get a view of the nearby Turtle Mountain Island.

This is architectural biomimicry on a whole new level: taking inspiration not from large organisms like trees or animals, but from the molecular structure of a virus module. Designed and installed at the 2012 TED Conference by Skylar Tibbits and Arthur Olson, The Self-Assembly Line consists of a set of these modules inside a larger structure that forces them together through stochastic rotation.

Together, the geometry of each unit as well as magnets affixed to strategic places ensure that the units fit together into a viral structure. Over time, as the units continue to come together, they form furniture-scale configurations. The design is a small-scale version of the architects’ vision for self-assembling large-scale structures.

“Self-Assembly as a method of construction relies on discrete and programmable components, simple construction/design sequences, energy input and structural redundancy – fundamental elements that are demonstrated in the installation,” say the architects at ArchDaily. “This installation demonstrates the intersection of macro and micro worlds as well as translation from molecular and synthetic phenomena to large-scale physical implementation. We aim to fuse the worlds of design, computation and biology through a process of scaling up.”

“While implementing the known structure of molecular systems, this installation also proposes the implementation of design/engineering to natural phenomena as a hybrid system. Part scientific research, part design speculation – we are neither restricted to the exact specifications of the biological realm, nor the limitlessness of the design world.”