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Now, in our Earth's Frontiers series we are soaring high with bio-inspiration.

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From the wingtips of an eagle to the thorax of a dragonfly,

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we take a look at how scientists are applying the benefits of a billion years of evolution.

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Becky Anderson has the story.

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Mimicry, the biomimicry, but for the gliders, we have a lot to learn from those.

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Biomimicry -- the science of replicating the little details which nature has perfected over billions of years of evolution.

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For the French, perfecting flight is about learning from the experts.

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Some time ago, I had some flight in paragliders.

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Then because I'm an aviation engineer, I had in mind to build my own and to design my own,

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but with some features from birds, because I know that evolution made very, very efficient wings.

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First, one feature under this wing is a winglet.

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And normal paragliders like this at the tip of the wing (gesturing), and mine is like this (gesturing again).

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It makes more wing span. So it flies better. For the same area, you have [a] better glider.

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And the second feature of birds, I do the ability to reduce area just to fly faster and to sink a lot,

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not to be sucked in [into] the clouds. Then, the sinking of the wings is much better and the speed, also.

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And it flaps a little bit like birds. Yeah.

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Big aviation companies are following the same trend.

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This is a Dassault Aviation's latest design, which is now manufactur[ing] the Falcon 7X,

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which features three engines, which has digital fly by wire and also winglet[s] at the tip of the wing[s].

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The winglet[s] are just inspired from the observation of eagles.

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Eagles can adapt and reform their wing tips due to different conditions.

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And then we understood that in tradition such devices reduced the drag of the aircraft,

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and then reduces the fuel consumption.

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Up in the Alps, scientists in French aerospace labs are being inspired by dragonflies.

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We thought that it was better to try to mimic insects,

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because when you look at the wing of an insect, the wing is nearly inert.

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All the living parts are within the thorax, which is very easier to handle with.

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This is a thorax, and I will show you how it works. And these are the eyes, which are, in fact, cameras.

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Here, the latest drone technology is being developed -- unmanned devices which can fly.

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The drones, it's very exciting. It's very exciting, of course, because technologically, it's lots of challenges.

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And you can see here, the three beams, which allows a twist of the wing, which is totally bio-inspired.

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Scientists here acknowledge that nature has perfected its own design solutions across time.

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Billions of years of evolution leads [lead] to a very complicated biological system.

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Biomimicry, you cannot really reproduce nature, but there is one thing you can do,

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it's try to reproduce some natural phenomenon with human technologies.