Beautiful Homes Built By Animal Architects
September 26, 2023
•10 min read
Animals build incredible homes, nests and structures. Here are some amazing architectural structures created by animals and insects!
For the most part, animals aren’t too fussy about the appearance of their homes. Most are perfectly simple, designed to provide warmth and shelter for creatures and their young; not to win any awards for appearances.
But not every animal takes homemaking so lightly. Some animals build homes that rival and inspire many of mankind’s greatest architectural achievements. From vibrant solo efforts to incredible displays of teamwork and ingenuity, here are some of nature’s greatest architects.Beaver Dams
As one of the largest rodents in the world, beavers usually weigh between 45 and 60 lbs, about 20 to 30 kilograms. Like other rodents, their teeth never stop growing, which they counteract by constantly gnawing on wood! The other reason, of course, is that they build dams from that wood.
Have you ever noticed how beaver teeth tend to be orange? This isn’t poor dental hygiene. It’s because their bodies allocate high amounts of iron to their tooth enamel, which makes them incredibly strong while also coloring them.Termite Mounds
Moving away from cute and furry into creepy and crawly, it’s time for termites. There are a few different kinds of termites that could easily earn their architecture degree. Compass termites, endemic to northern Australia build large, wedge-shaped nests which are usually oriented north to south. Their orientation helps them regulate heat, taking direct sunlight onto their wide eastern and western sides in the morning and afternoon.
Their wedge-like shape means that when the sun is hottest, around midday, less heat is absorbed, preventing overheating. The mounds can sometimes be found in eerie, graveyard-like groupings.Baya Weaver Nest
Like many birds, the Baya Weaver nests high in the branches of thorny trees throughout India and Southeast Asia. During monsoon season, when they breed, the weavers gather in groups of 20-30 to construct their intricate neighborhoods together near sources of food, water, and building materials.
They are woven using strips of acacia and palm leaves, and the pendulous nests include a central nesting chamber and a long entrance tunnel. When the nest is partially complete, the male bird hangs from it to display and attract a female. The more impressive his semi-finished nest is, the more likely he is to find a mate!Red Ovenbird Nest
These feathery South American architects get their name because their nests look exactly as their name suggests! The structures, composed of thousands of mud pellets, resemble the shape and color of rudimentary clay ovens and are often stacked one on top of another.
Sociable Weaver Nests
These African birds, who live in the Namib and Kalahari Deserts, build huge communal nests; some of the largest in the world. The proximity to one another, as well as the size of these nests, which can weigh up to a ton, help protect the birds from the wildly fluctuating temperatures in the desert.
Vogelkop Bowerbird Nest
Native to New Guinea, the Bowerbird doesn’t display in the same way as most of its avian brothers and sisters. Instead of a dance or a song, this chirpy little architect decorates its bower, which is like a cave of sticks on the ground, with flowers, berries, and other colorful odds and ends.
Indian Harvester Ants Nest Architecture
Back to the world of bugs. This time, ants. Indian Harvesters are ants who love a good maze! These six-legged creatures build up mounds of earth in concentric circles around their nest entrances, with openings in the tubular walls making the whole structure look, from above, like the innards of a labyrinth.
Weaver Ants and Leaf Rolling Weevils
Both the Australian Weaver Ant and the Leaf Rolling Weevil make their homes in leaves. The Weevil, native to Florida, snips leaves down the middle with their pincers and rolls them around itself, constructing a burrito-like dwelling. The female Leaf Rolling Weevil will leave an egg or two inside and stick around to guard them from predators.
Desert Sand Scorpion
These arachnids are found in North American deserts, like the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, where temperatures can reach up to 120 Fahrenheit during the day. Desert Scorpions are sand-colored to help evade predators and sneak up on prey, and their diet consists of insects, spiders, and occasionally small lizards and rodents.
Honeycomb
One of Earth’s most important species, honey bees make their nests out of wax, which they secrete from specialized glands. With this, their amazing instincts guide the production of perfectly hexagonal honeycomb cells, some of which are left open to house their young, while some are closed up to store pollen and honey. Beeswax, amazingly, is visco-elastic, and though not visible to the naked eye it is always slowly flowing.
Paper Wasp Nests
Though wasps are perceived as the evil relative of bees, that doesn’t make them any less capable architects. Paper wasps are particularly talented, as they chew leaves and bark with their mandibles, creating a kind of paper they stick together with their gluey saliva. Their nests have a remarkable cardboard-like appearance, and they’ve even been known to use colored paper as a construction material when available.
Biologists gave wasps construction paper laughingsquid.com/busy-wasps-bui…
Pufferfish Crop Circles
For a long time, these ornate circular patterns at the bottom of the ocean were a mystery for divers who encountered them. It turns out, though, that these crop circles of the sea are built by male Japanese pufferfish to attract the females. The lovestruck ladies then lay their eggs in the sediment in the center of these mathematically intricate designs.
Spongilla Fly Cocoon
Spongeflies are a group of net-winged insects that may be some of the natural world’s most impressive architects. The homes their larvae build are small and personal cocoons. The multilayered constructions consist of a beautiful outer net and a tough inner covering. The larvae, grabbing a solid surface, build a net-like structure from the semi-liquid silk they produce, which hardens in contact with the air.
spongefly larvae spend up to 6 hours building an elaborate strong cocoon, in which to pupate. This elaborate mesh arc, made from silk contains cross fibres for support, strength and to guide the completion of the inner casing. 🎥credits Animal wire: bit.ly/3o9zdl3
Urodid Moth Cocoon
Amazingly, the Urodid Moth’s young have developed a very similar cocoon-building process. These cocoons, though, are built hanging from the underside of leaves. The Urodid Moth is a rainforest dweller, and the double-whammy of the leaf roof and the twisted net of a cocoon keep the rain off of the developing caterpillar within.