Could this desert beetle help humans harvest water from thin air?

Pedro_P

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The Namib Desert beetle gets its water from fog.Solvin Zanko/Minden Pictures
▼ To survive in the arid wilderness of southwestern Africa, the Namib Desert beetle harvests water from thin air. The blueberry-size, long-legged insect leans its bumpy body into the wind, letting droplets of fog accumulate and drip down its wing case into its mouth. For years, scientists have tried to learn the insect’s secrets to help provide clean water to communities in water-stressed areas. Now, a team of researchers has gained deeper insight into how the texture on the insect’s body helps it collect water.
When the Namib Desert beetle (Stenocara gracilipes) “fog basks,” water droplets hit its abdomen and roll down its body. Researchers have spent decades trying to discover how the insect’s surface transports the droplets to its mouth. But first, the beetle must collect the droplets. So, Hunter King, a physicist at the University of Akron in Ohio, and colleagues focused instead on how the shape and texture of the beetles increased the amount of water droplets they could capture from the air to begin with.
It might seem easy to catch fog, “but if you’re trying to grab it, it goes right through your fingers,” King says. “That’s the whole problem. It’s difficult to make two things touch each other.”
King and his team used 3D printing to create (▪ ▪ ▪)

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asr335704

At high level, harvesting water from thin air does not seem like a long term solution. We should conserve water and help earth replenish its ground water levels.

culsivaji

You have to ask, ‘Can you actually scale this beetle approach to something large enough to collect enough water that actually matters on a human level?