It figures that Nature would get there first...

[roseembolism]

A while ago, I came up with the idea of Garbage Turtles; bioengineered critters designed to eat discarded metal and glass, and secret them into neat patterns on their shells, which then would be shed for easy recycling. I did it for a different project, but I was going to adapt it for Under the Green Moon, since one of the concepts of the setting is that easy sources of ores have been used up millennia ago.

It figures nature would get there first: Scaly-foot Snail secrets iron sufides into its skeleton. It just goes to show there's very few concepts that aren't mimicking in some way something that evolution came up with.

And here's the scaly-foot snail, also know as the gold-footed snail. Isn't it cute?

Comments

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

that's a key to several elements I'm working with; cultures turning to biological methods both to scavenge resources and because a lot of the older material methods have to deal with resource scarcity.

Note that resource scarcity doesn't even have to mean the materials are gone, just locked up in manners that are difficult to work with. Compare working on a low-temperature forge with iron ore vs. high-temperature steel, for example. And that's leaving out exotic crap like single-crystal iron, or exotic laminates.