Are cities a purely human invention? In the final episode of PBS NATURE‘s Animal Homes we’ll discover we’re not alone. Some birds, spiders, lizards, and fish build cities, too. Tune in on April 22 to learn:
- Puffins nest in burrows where the female lays a single egg. The small family of three lives in a city of 40,000 birds that flies together in a Puffin Wheel when they return from the sea.
- Spiders are usually solitary — they even eat each other — but in the rainforest social spiders build and maintain enormous communal homes. Watch a preview here.
- When an albatross colony is just starting out there may be a shortage of males. See video from Hawaii where the ladies make do in a pinch.
- Have you ever seen leaf-cutter ants carrying leaves in a procession to their nest? I thought they ate the leaves until Animal Homes showed me what the leaves are really for. You’ll be amazed at how complicated it is.
- Speaking of complicated, there’s a fish whose social life is so complex you need a score card to keep up. The male oscillated wrasse builds a nest that becomes a city of thousands — a city that ought to be called Peyton Place. Competition, cooperation, and social drama in a fish!
Watch Animal Homes: Animal Cities on PBS NATURE, April 22 at 8:00pm EDT. In Pittsburgh it’s on WQED.
(photo Courtesy of © THIRTEEN Productions LLC)
Animal Homes is a wonderful series! In the first episode, “The Nest”, the hummingbird portion was filmed here in Tucson at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. I highly recommend visiting during the winter months, when they also have a spectacular Raptor Free-Flight Show.
Wondering if anyone noticed last night during episode 2, when they were talking about the saltmarsh sparrow and showing one building its nest, in one scene shown quickly the bird looked like a seaside sparrow instead of a saltmarsh. It was so fast. Maybe too quick. It very well could have been a saltmarsh, but just for a split second I saw seaside.
kc, you know ocean side sparrows far better than I do. It went right by me!
Jonathan Pruitt at Pitt studies social spiders and is just a most excellent, engaging speaker – if you ever get a chance to hear him present his research, go! He’s published in Nature and other top shelf journals and has been covered in all manner of lay media (e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/the-social-life-of-spiders-thriving-in-a-social-web.html) – just fascinating work. I saw a few social spider nests in the Amazon rain forest in Peru – amazing!
We have a chicken coop, it is fantastic that a Robin has decided to move in with our 4chickens, we’ve tried ushering him/her out via the door, but minutes later there it is. It’s now got its own feeding station. We are absolutely thrilled to bits. Never heard of this before. It’s now over a week, and still it’s there in evidence, I’m left wondering what it’s mate will make of it!! Pat Jenkins Carlton Nottingham. I can send a pic.