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. (h/t: inhabitat)
Sociable Weaver
Image credits: Mike Soroczynski
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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
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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
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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
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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) via
