Hello this is Jana and welcome to Story Noory and I'm here with Matthew and Elaine Sweetapple

the creators of Lost on Infinity by Rockford's Rock Opera.

It's the musical story of a dog called Rockford who journeys to the island of infinity, home to the last one of every extinct animal species.

We've had a sample of these wonderful stories on our website for many years, and they've been tremendously popular.

Matthew, thank you so much for dropping in. Can you tell me what you've learned over the years?

Well, we've learned lots of things, but I suppose I think the most important is how wonderful

it is to be in a position to be able to write stories for children all over the world and to hear

what all those children think of those stories and how in many cases really pleased to say our stories have inspired children to look at nature

and also a love of music and storytelling and I can't think of a better thing to do than to inspire young minds.

Wonderful. So what about the science behind the story?

Very important in our story is the fact that every creature, every plant has a secret for the world, whatever that might be.

In the scientific world that's called biomimicry, but really that's just a long word for learning from nature

and seeing how nature has worked out how to address problems

and to make things better. And Elaine has an excellent example of this because she in

our story plays a character called the Cockleburick.

Yes, well, although the Cockleburick is a fictional character,

it's based around true science because many years ago, in the 1930s a Swiss scientist called

George Lemesra was walking his dog in the Swiss Alps and when he got back he noticed there were little cockle burs stuck to his fur.

As he was picking them out he decided to look at them under a microscope and what he discovered

the cockle burs had little hooks on them and these hooks would stick to the dog's fur and

Eventually after a lot of trial and error this Swiss scientist developed Velcro, which is now being used all over the world

for lots of different reasons. You probably have Velcro straps on your shoes,

...