Yet, to create such a factory requires a new way of looking at the world. It takes common materials and adds value to them by design. It can't go offshore and drill for oil. It has to use flies and crickets instead. It has to make do with what's available.
Life adds information to raw materials.
That's how life cheats entropy. That's its trick. It's like Haiku poetry, it's power in a small space. Even if scientists figure out how nature is doing something, creating a product isn't going to happen overnight. Benyus gives the example of a researcher studying the adhesives blue mussels use to stick to rocks under water.