Feral by Design | The Biomimicry Podcast
2026 Signal Awards Finalist
Feral by Design is a practical biomimicry podcast hosted by Australian innovation strategist Pia Williams that steals nature’s smartest strategies for human chaos.
What if a better way through a problem, from product and process innovation to workplace burnout, communication bottlenecks and creative blocks, could be found by bringing human insight and biology together?
Across 3.8 billion years, nature has evolved extraordinary ways to communicate, adapt, build, collaborate, protect, regulate and survive. Engaging in what Pia playfully calls Grand Theft Bio, Feral looks directly to nature for wild, elegant strategies we might steal for our own messy problems.
Each episode starts with a real-world challenge, then uses human-centred design and biomimicry to dig into how nature handles the relevant function and translate the biology into something useful. That might mean an original product or process innovation, a way to make better decisions or tackle human behaviour, or investigating what really happened when designers turned to nature for answers.
Made for curious minds, Feral translates complex biology into short, self-deprecating and highly insightful stories spanning design and innovation, lateral thinking, creative problem solving, self improvement and personal development. Whether it's applying an octopus's distributed intelligence, turning a biological strategy into a new product concept, or borrowing a beaver's approach to boundaries, Feral finds surprisingly useful ways to design, work, think and live a little differently.
Expect field experiments, self-inflicted disasters, surprising science and plenty of ideas you may want to steal.
Hit follow, and let's go steal some genius.
Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.
Feral by Design | The Biomimicry Podcast
Looking for Lions, Finding Termites: Attention by Design
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What happens when you give someone a way of looking, without telling them what to find?
Pia takes one small part of her octopus-inspired innovation method out of the office and sends it on holiday to Zimbabwe with her friend Jane.
The experiment starts at Eastgate Centre in Harare, the termite-inspired building from the previous episode. Jane gets one loose lens: How does this place feel? What can you hear? What do you notice? What surprises you?
Then Pia gets out of the way.
What begins as a visit to a biomimicry landmark somehow turns into termite-mound excursions, sunset drinks on top of one, an unofficial Zimbabwe branch of Feral. And a safari where termite mounds become surprisingly competitive with lions.
Underneath the fun is an experiment in attention: how a simple lens can change what we notice, what we follow and even what the people around us start seeing.
A story about biomimicry, octopus intelligence, distributed sensing, curiosity - and what can happen when you direct attention without prescribing the answer.
Partner episode: How Termites Taught a Building to Keep Cool (Eastgate Centre)
Original method episode: The Octopus Method: Octopus Intelligence When You're the Bottleneck
Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.
S3E07
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Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.
Looking for Lions, Finding Termites
SpeakerBecause you know what you focus on is what you get. My focus, whilst I was, you know, looking at elephants and lion and all of the beasts. Buffalo, there were just so many. It was amazing. But then in conjunction with that, I kept going, oh, there's another termite mound. Oh, there's another termite mound. In the end, I had to stop looking at the termite mounds because it was like you're focusing on the termite mounds, and we're looking for elephant or lion right now.
Speaker 1So Jane went to Zimbabwe for the magnificent wildlife, and somehow I managed to make termite mounds competitive just by giving her a little mission to a termite mound-inspired building. I'm Pia, and this is Feral by Design. You might think this episode is about termite mounds. God knows. Jane apparently does. But really, it's a story about what happens when you give someone a way of looking without telling them what to find, and then get out of the way. If you listened to the last episode on the Eastgate Centre, the partner to this one, you'll know I promised another little experiment. I took one part of the octopus method, something I've only ever used in a work context, out of the office, and I sent it on holiday, Jane's holiday specifically. Now,
The Octopus Method: Distributed Sensing
Speaker 1a quick nutshell for those who haven't listened to the original episode about this method that I designed for innovation project work. Normally, when I run an innovation project, I give a team a full immersion brief. Specific tasks, interviews already booked, observation points, meeting times, the whole lot. With the octopus method, I don't. The actual work, what they do, where they look, when they pivot, comes from the lens that I give them. And the lens is basically like a filter. The method is designed using biomimicry. In an octopus, two-thirds of its neurons are in the arms. Clever arms. Each arm can process information locally and act without checking back to the brain every time. That's distributed intelligence. Each arm is also sensing as it goes, and that's distributed sensing. Both of these are built into my Octopus Method. The lens technique that I use points your attention. But what you notice and follow and decide and gather out in the field is up to you. Please go back and listen to the original episode because that recap doesn't really do the method justice. It took me being locked in a basement bathroom in India to devise the bloody thing. Here though, I wasn't using the full method. For starters, one person, not a team, no actual project challenge. And, fairly importantly, Jane was on holiday. I did briefly consider going further, briefing her friends, giving different people different lenses, and then I thought, oh god, I can't do that. I don't know Jane's friends, and they definitely didn't sign up to become pawns in my methodology experiment. I'd never be invited again. Because it can so easily become, okay, well hang on, yes, that's a beautiful lion, but my lens, feral, was supposed to be about companionship. So where's the other lion? You know that kind of lens. So instead, I chose to play with just one element of the method in one specific part of her holiday, her feral mission.
Eastgate Centre, Harare
Speaker 1So, Jane's mission, you may remember from the last episode, was to investigate Eastgate, the building in Harare, inspired by termite mounds. So I needed a lens for this, right? Now, if this was a work project, the lens might be something like thermal comfort or thermal discomfort, depending on what we were trying to understand for this building that was designed for passive cooling. But I didn't give Jane that. Her holiday lens was how does this place feel and how does it make you feel? What can you hear? What do you notice around you and what surprises you?
SpeakerIt was fantastic being your Feral. It wasn't like an assignment, oh, you've got to do this and you've got to get this right and make sure. I think it was the perfect brief, uh, Pia. It was like, can you go and investigate this and tell me what you think and feel? So that made it fun, like having a broad brief.
Speaker 1One person, one loose lens, and me mostly out of the way. So I'm only going to give you a tiny slice of Jane's Eastgate experience here, because there's a whole episode already bubbling with that goodness, and the amazing biomimicry story behind the building itself in the partner episode just before this one. It's called How Termites Taught a Building to Keep Cool. Definitely give that one a listen. Here, for now, I just want to show you a taster of what the lens surfaced.
SpeakerI've just never seen really anything like it. And I think I mentioned it felt like uh being in a matrix, almost like a puzzle to be solved, all covered in that red dust I was referring to. Uh so it definitely has a, although it's inside, it has an outside feeling. There was just so much to uncover, like pass the parcel, take off one layer, and oh, there's a uh, you know, another thing to notice, there are plants that sort of run up the the side of the building on the inside, and they were, you know, alive and well, uh, but they were covered in dust, and it just it was a little bit sad actually. It felt like it had been a thriving hub at one point in time.
Speaker 1And then Jane says it was a little bit sad actually. Did you hear that? That matters to me because a checklist doesn't get you to feeling sad for a building. She described Eastgate as a thoroughfare, people moving through it, which made me smile when I heard it because it happens to be exactly what the architect, Mick Pearce, intended it to be. Nobody told Jane that. She noticed it and felt it. And that's what the lens is for. It changes the quality of looking. On holiday it's fun. In work it's everything.
The Termite Mound Quest Begins
Speaker 1By rights, my little Eastgate experiment should have stayed behind in the city. And technically it did. But I did request one additional small thing. If she came across a termite mound somewhere, it didn't matter where, could she snap a quick photo for the for the feral socials? You know, Eastgate meets the real thing vibes. One small, I thought inconsequential request. But then it got a life of its own.
SpeakerIt's pretty funny. And not only that, it wasn't just me, it was my beautiful friends. The farm next to them is not really used as uh an industrial farm. So we went driving there one afternoon, and they're the photos I sent you of these termite mounds. So in my mind, I'm thinking termite mounds are, I don't know, like the size of maybe me, 163 centimetres. Um, but these termite mounds were more like hills, and they were absolutely huge, and we climbed up it to watch the sunset. It definitely became a theme of the holiday because you know, my friends were invested. We were doing termite mound excursions.
Speaker 1We took one of the children from next door on this journey with us. Did your family
The Punch Buggy Effect of Attention
Speaker 1ever do that punch buggy thing that every time you saw a VW Beetle on road trips and stuff, you'd go punch buggy and you'd say the colour, and then you'd punch one of another sibling, just family love. Now we'd be like punch buggy blue, boom. Everyone fixated on trying to find the next beetle uh car. Yes. I feel like you've done punch termite or something.
SpeakerSpot on. Spot on.
Speaker 1I gave one person one lens and asked for a photo, and somehow I ended up with Nathalie, Ays, a neighbour's kid, even a couple of the dogs too, an entire unofficial Zimbabwe branch of Feral going on termite mound excursions. And it kept going onto the safari itself. A seven-hour drive away, different landscape, open plains, properly
Lions, Hyenas and Termite Mounds on Safari
Speaker 1in the wild now. Picture this.
SpeakerThis pride of seven lion, and we're like three metres away just watching them eat this buffalo. And we're the only ones there. I actually just had binoculars, and I do need to buy some binoculars as part of the toolkit. But I was still so scared that I couldn't take photos. Other people were taking photos and footage, but I, you know, we're in an open vehicle, there are seven lions just. Oh, and then, you know, while we're watching the the lions eating the buffalo, someone goes, Oh, there's five hyena coming up behind us.
Speaker 1And then at this moment, Jane says, Oh, look, a termite mound. Okay, maybe not. But imagine. So, honest report
How Intentional Focus Changes What You Notice
Speaker 1card for this more holiday tinker than robust controlled experiment. Did the lens work? Yes. Did the full octopus method go to Zimbabwe? Absolutely not. This was less octopus method, more one arm on a really enthusiastic trial run. And one person's focus infected the others until the whole group was looking for termite mounds. I love how infectious curiosity can be. But underneath all the termite fun, I wanted to know whether any of this actually changed the trip for Jane.
SpeakerI was on holiday. I was hanging out with my friends, you know, three weeks of absolute fun and adventure. And for me, it was an addition to that. My enthusiasm was buoyed because they were enthusiastic. Then, you know, when we were with their friends, we were talking about it. So then it became a conversation with different groups of friends. And I think it was more about the adventure of it. I don't know, just look at things differently, and it sort of unraveled in weird and wonderful ways. Like ending up having a picnic, watching the sun go down on the top of a termite mound on the farm next door wasn't on the schedule. You could tell we were enjoying having an assignment and an exploration. So yeah, it did change the holiday because it gave us an opportunity to do something different.
Speaker 1Termite mound became the third wheel in many of her shots. Elephant and a termite mound. Ooh, lion walking by, and there it is again, termite mound. It gave them another layer of the holiday to be in together. Something to notice, something to chase, and surprisingly, also a little memory maker in itself. For a real team on a real challenge, this runs at full strength,
Try an Observation Lens on Holiday
Speaker 1the actual method. But if you want to steal the smallest bit of it, holidays are perfect for a tinker. It's school holidays in parts of Australia right now. So pick one outing, one little mission. Give the kids a lens, one each, if you can. That'd be me. Keep it simple, like shape or sound or colour. This is just for fun, right? Actually, not too simple, or you'll end up with punch buggy. There's one. Oh, there's another one. Oh look, another one. Then do the hard bit. Don't helicopter. Don't direct them. That's the whole point. Wait to see what they find. Who else starts noticing too? What follows you home? I would love, love to hear how you go. And thank you to Jane, Feral's first, roving reporter, and to Nathalie and Ays and the entire unofficial termite squad. Jane told me that while they were sitting on top of their termite mound having those sunset drinks, the sundowner bar at the top of the mound, she looked down and saw several really big holes in the mound. And she paused, looked into one, and caught herself thinking, I wonder what's going on down in there. I sent her away with a lens. I didn't tell her what to find or what to do with it. And I am so glad. I'm Pia, this is Feral by Design. Nature owns the patent, we get to copy it.