Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's from Djigstra. I digress. Most of the times, mimicking Nature works very well. We tend to always remember our most spectacular failure, but that's a selection bias.
His name is Dijkstra. I'm curious how you arrive at the conclusion that mimicking nature works most of the time, do you have some examples?
You don't have to go very far looking for examples. The fictional Nautilus submarine was named after the animal Julio Verne copied its depth control system (the same one all real submarines use till today). Also, the first submarines' shape copied whales, a design that was adapted (but not completely replaced) because it does not work as well witout also copying their propulsion system.
By the way, birds wings are better than planes ones in several important ways (but worse in a few others). We don't copy them because we don't have good enough materials, not because it's not a good idea.