Nature has always been a source of inspiration for man both in art and technological applications.

From tribal decorations to the most modern design, from the flight of Icarus to the conquest of space.

Even the protection of the human body is guided by nature: it uses animal hides and feathers to protect itself from the cold, shields and armour to defend itself from enemies.

Today modern technology creates sophisticated protective “armour” for work and sport and it does so by starting from the observation of a shell – more appropriately called “exoskeleton”- which many animals are equipped with.

It is an external skeleton that protects and supports the body. It is a means of defence from predators, it impedes dehydration in terrestrial species and is so robust that it supports the high pressure exerted by water on marine organisms.

It is “armour” formed by more or less large and overlapping plates that appeared in the first forms of animal life on earth, such as the Trilobites in the Cambrian Era 500 million years ago.

The anthropods (insects, scorpions, crabs, lobsters) and molluscs are the main groups of organisms equipped with an exoskeleton. Other animals possess a similar defence mechanism: the scales on reptiles, which become a shell in turtles and the bony shields of primitive mammals such as the armadillo.

In many cases the efficaciousness of the protection is not only determined by robustness, but also by the mobility of the plates that permit many species to carry out a true “change in structure” and take on an almost spherical shape, the most resistant to pressure and impact.