when in doubt allways look to mother nature for a solution, we have just tried to replicate all that we have from mother nature. its crazy like millions of years of a large group of orginizims all trying to survive yet thinking bassically as one, sharing methods and resolutions to problems... all that we have has been reverse engineered from mother nature, try me, its true hahah
thats the goal of all engineers is to make something as close to perfect (ie a replica of nature) as possible. look at trees for example they are in a system that is pre stressed (tension) on all sides to account for wind, otherwise it wouldn't be able to bend as much as it can in wind, its a living material that is so versitile it litterally changed the way humans live. we are still trying to recreate such a material Or the simple shell for example too, it has lamminar ceramic plates that give is much higher tensile and compressive strenght than anything humans have come close to with ceramics. MIT is currently working on some crazy secret stuff i was lucky enough to see while working in there, and they arn't even close! i mean spider webs can stop planes and weigh less than conventional methods to do so.. the list goes on and on