[3] By making use of biostatistics, and also bringing together several scientific and engineering disciplines, his research which focused on mechanisms for movement in the animal kingdom led him to pioneer the field of bionics in Germany.
Professor Marianne Stokholm head of the Department of Architecture & Design at Aalborg university (AAU) Denmark, writes:[4] "The German biologist Werner Nachtigall has since the 1960s been occupied with bionics.
Nachtigall formulated ten principles which he felt should undergird bionics:[5] The biomechanist Steven Vogel in his book Life's devices: the physical world of animals and plants, writes, "Wherever nature has a structure, biologists have been painstakingly describing it, but most often paying little attention to mechanical functions.
Among interlocking joints he recognizes miters, rabbets, dovetails, and mortises; under releasable attachments he describes plugs and sockets, hooks and eyes, snaps, vises, forceps, anchors, suction cups, and others.
All that these latter require is gentle contact with a sufficiently irregular surface (fur perhaps originally but cloth works at least as well) and enough burrs attach to provide a surprisingly strong connection.