13
Animal Architects And The Beautiful Homes They Build
Most animals are content with finding a slightly softer and more sheltered space to sleep for the night, but there also wild animals out there that demand nothing but the finest accommodations. These 13 animals are some of the best architects that the animal kingdom has to offer.
Home building is probably the closest that many animals will come to tool use, in the sense that we think of it. It seems that the jury is still out on whether or not nest (or dam, in the beaver’s case) building can be considered to be tool use – these animals do carry sticks, twigs and leaves for intentional future use, but they don’t “use” them on other things the way a chimpanzee uses a stick to hunt termites or how we use keyboards to write articles about animals.
Sociable Weaver
Image credits: Mike Soroczynski
Image credits: TyneWear-Rob
Image credits: Linda De Volder
Image credits: Dillon Marsh
The
sociable weaver, native to South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, weaves huge
communal nests that can hosts hundreds of birds across multiple generations.
These nests, woven from sticks and grass, are permanent. The deeper inner
chambers maintain a higher temperature at night, allowing the birds to stay
warm. (Image credits: Denis Roschlau)
Australian Weaver Ants
Weaver ants, which live in Central Africa and South-East Asia, pull together
live leaves and use larval silk to glue them together. These nests can vary in
size from a single leave to bunches of glued leaves up to half a meter in
length. (Image credits: Ingo Arndt)
Vogelkop Bowerbird
Image credits: Ingo Arndt
Image credits: thewildernessalternative.com
Image credits: thewildernessalternative.com
Image credits: cannedyams.wordpress.com
The
male Vogelkop bowerbird creates bowers, or small huts, out of grass and sticks
to attract females to mate with. The consummate interior designers of the animal
world, these birds arrange berries, beetles, flowers and other colorful and
eye-catching ornaments into artistic arrangements to attract their mates.
Ironically, the females do not actually use these bowers to raise their young.
(Image credits: thewildernessalternative.com)
Compass Termite
Image credits: Ingo Arndt
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The
compass termite builds large wedge-shaped mounds for nests. These wedges are
roughly oriented in a north-south orientation, which gives them their name. It
is believed that this shape helps their mounds stay thermoregulated. (Image
credits: Travel NT)
Honeybees
Image credits: Bigstock
Honeybees’ entire lives revolve around their nests. It is in these nests, which
they construct out of secreted wax, that they process their food and raise their
young. (Image credits: Damian Biniek)
European Red Wood Ants
European red wood ants build large mounds on the forest floor to house their
nests. Several of these mounds can be linked as mother-daughter mounds for the
ants to switch between in the event of a catastrophic event at one o the mounds.
(Image credits: Ingo Arndt)
Red Ovenbird
Image credits: merlinsilk.com
The
red ovenbird builds its nest out of clay and mud. These strong nests help
prevent predation and, once abandoned, can provide other birds with a relatively
secure place to live. (Image credits: Eric Henrique)
Baya Weaver
Image credits: Ingo Arndt
Image credits: Ramnath Bhat
Image credits: Farhan Younus
Baya
weavers often build their elegant hanging woven nests in thorny palm and acacia
trees or above bodies of water, where predators may have difficulty reaching
them. The nests can often be found in colonies, although isolated ones do exist
as well. (Image credits: subroto)
Wasp
Image credits: Antoinette
The
majority of wasps actually do not actually build nests, preferring solitary or
even parasitic arrangements. Social wasps, on the other hand, build elegant
paper nests out of plant pulp, spit, resin and other materials. These consist of
internal paper honeycomb tiers (similar to a honey bee’s comb in appearance but
not material) surrounded by a paper wrapping. (Image credits: crabcaked)
Beavers
Beavers build damn to flood woodland areas to a certain depth. They then build
submerged entrances that allow them to avoid predators and to hunt for food in
the winter. Their dams can be truly massive – the largest known beaver damn, in
Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park, is roughly 850m, or 2790 ft, in length.
When the water is deep enough, they may sometimes live in burrows instead.
(Image credits: Ingo Arndt)
Montezuma Oropendola
Image credits: Andrew Block
The
Montezuma oropendola weaves its nests out of small vines and grass. They usually
live in colonies of roughly 30 birds, which include a dominant male that mates
with the females. (Image credits: Simon Valdez)
Swallow
Image credits: Saurav Pandey
Image credits: thetransientbiologist.wordpress.com
Swallows build nests out of various materials, and some don’t even build any at
all, choosing instead to nest in found or abandoned cavities. Certain species of
swallow, however, create their nests primarily out of their own saliva. These
nests are edible, and are considered a delicacy by some. (Image credits:
Sabyasachi Kolkata)
Caddisfly
Image credits: heatherkh
When
it’s time for the caddisfly to pupate, it spins a tough cocoon out of pebbles,
sand, shells, and other lake- and river-bed detritus. It weaves these elements
together with strands of its own silk to safely grow to adulthood. (Image
credits: Jan Hamrsky)
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BBC Hidden Kingdoms - Under Open Skies
Immerse yourself in the lives of extraordinary characters that stand a few inches tall. From chipmunks to mice, be entertained and spellbound by the creatures that call the Hidden Kingdoms home.
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