As a rapidly developing area in biomechanics, mechanics of biological materials aims to investigate the fundamental relationship between functions, properties, structures, and compositions of various natural biological materials at different length scales and the underlying physical mechanisms through experimental research and theoretical analysis, and to provide inspirations from the splendid living world for the biomimetic design of new materials. In this paper, some recent achievements, mainly made by Chinese scholars in this field, are briefly reviewed, including the stiffening and toughening mechanisms of such biological composites as nacres and horns, the relation between the surface wetting behavior and the micro/nanostructures, and some relevant biomimetic applications as well. The contents of seven invited papers published in this special issue are also introduced.