Hey guys back again after a long and busy break over the Christmas period, I hope you all had an amazing Christmas and new year and are ready for a great 2018, lets get started!
As a species it is safe to say that we have developed into quite the intelligent beings, it may not seem that way when you see who most of the general population idolise, a plethora of reality TV stars, has-beens and movie stars, but even possessing the capacity to enjoy mindless entertainment is superior to most species on this planet.
Throughout history humanity has developed and built structures that would seem completely Alien to our distant ancestors, giant megastructures that seem to reach in to the Sky, sprawling maze-like cities and vast bridges and tunnels that span across miles of previously inaccessible terrain.
But are there any examples of engineering feats or structural ingenuity in the Animal Kingdom outside of our own achievements, there are literally millions of different species out there, Insects, Birds, Fish and many others so surely, we can’t be alone in our ability to produce structures whilst displaying a level of intelligence in designing our surroundings to suit our needs.
In fairness near enough every bird on the planet possesses some level of ability in regard to building structures, aside from certain species of ice-dwelling Penguin, every Bird will construct a nest to house their eggs and to provide a safe-haven for their chicks.
Whilst most nests are created by simply piling different sized sticks, twigs and pebbles, there are several species of Bird that like to employ a bit more technical thought in to the construction of their nests that will either be used for housing their offspring or to attract a mate.
In all most all cases the male will be tasked with building the complex structure, he will spend days, even weeks on end intricately weaving thin twigs and vines, and in the case of hanging weavers the entire structure will be attached to a branch via one thin strand, from a distance the nests appear merely to be floating balls of vegetation.
The Male weaver has quite the ego and should a female inspect his hanging masterpiece and not choose to stay and pair with him, he will often choose to completely dismantle the nest and start over, anything short of perfection is seen as failure for male hanging Weaver birds and he will continue to build endlessly until a female has opted to stay with him.
The breeding nests of the Bower Bird are quite simplistic, the female builds a fairly average bowl-shaped nest that will be used to raise her eventual chicks.
The Male on the other hand develops a Nest not for living in, but for the sole purpose of attracting a female, once he reaches sexual maturity his full attention will be placed on constructing and maintaining his complex nest (Bower) in the hope that one day a female will notice it and be impressed enough to pair with him.
He will build the Bower by intricately placing twigs so that they form an arch-like structure with a clear walk through, he will meticulously prune and perfect the Bower for at least 12 hours of the day and will continue to do so until a female has chosen him.
When the male Bower Bird isn’t pruning his nest, he is off in search of treasures, his instinct tells him that the female Bower Bird will be more attracted to a male that has a brightly coloured and vivid nest, as such the male will pick up any brightly coloured objects he can find and then adorn them on his Bower, this of course leads to several disputes with other males as each male will attempt to steal the brightly coloured objects from a competing male as seen in the video below.
When you think of Insects two things generally come to mind, firstly they are small, and secondly, they are insignificant, partly due to their size… who didn’t crush an Ant-hill when they were a child or poke a Beehive?
They are of course small, but they are far from insignificant and play a vital role within the environment they reside. They also work incredibly well as a community and are capable of constructing both massive and also complex megastructures, not too dissimilar from ourselves and our developed cities, some structures are capable of holding insects numbering in their millions.
Ants are a prime example of what can be achieved when hundreds of thousands of minds are working together to achieve a common goal, I’m a strong believer that if the human-race focused less on politics and point scoring and more on development and working together we’d already be a vastly superior race to what we are today, but lets get back to the Insects.
Termites, like Ants, construct nests underground, these nests are equal in complexity though the Termite has an extra impressive structure in addition to their subterranean nest.
To protect their underground nest the Termites will build vast structures above the nest, these structures are often several metres in height and comparative to the Termites size would be like ourselves building a structure over 2000M in height, the mounds are not for show however, and instead serve as a ventilation system for the underground nest.
Aside from just constructing complex structures to live in, some animals take it a step further and produce structures resembling artwork, with some displaying near perfect symmetry and the unlikeliest of environments.
The resulting structure is nothing short of a masterpiece, it almost appears to be a photoshopped work of art. The Male will occupy the breeding arena for 7-10 days whilst waiting for females to show interest in his work, all the while he will correct any imperfections that occur due to currents or intruders.
The central part of the structure is the only part that is used for reproduction, the surrounding radially aligned ridges appear to just be for show and will often be adorned with differently coloured fine sediment as well as shells and other debris for decoration. Here’s a video of the little guy at work:
This is only a brief look in to some of the structures some animals are able to construct, there are hundreds more out there and there are many out there that are still relatively unknown to researchers, I find it quite sobering that a 6 Inch long fish is able to create something I would struggle to produce in a closed environment with no outside interference, nature is incredible and there is a lot that we can learn from our animal cousins.
If you enjoyed this article feel free to check out some of my previous works, see you seen and thanks for reading!
