As well as children building dens, animals also build den structures in the environment through they are slightly different. I wanted to also consider these kind of natural dens before building my own natural den. Depending on the animals  the dens completely vary on material and design to suite the individual animals needs. The main different between children’s dens and animals dens are that animals dens need to be more secure and livable, as they act as a primary function as a home. Almost all animals create dens in some form or another as like humans i think dens for them provide an element of safety and particularly when animals are looking after their young they want to have somewhere where they feel like they can protect their children. The dens which appear most similar to the kind of dens that i am going to be building are the extravagant birds nest and dams built by beavers. Other dens built by animals often include holes in the ground which is not the kind of den children normally make. One of the only rules parents give children with den building is normally not to dig holes and climb into them encase they collapse. I want to consider a bit more closely why animals create dens compared to humans and to view how some of the basic structures are really similar. Below are some animals which build dens and what kind of structures they are.

Rabbits – Hollows, they are networks of tunnels underground with “rooms” which different rabbits live in. Rabbit families are often incredibly large which means an extensive network of tunnels.

Birds – Nests, different birds build very different nests depending on climate and other environmental factors. Some nest are simple circles while others have many birds living together and the structure is therefore bigger.

Beaver – Dams, this structure is not intended to be lived in by the beaver itself but the beaver uses a dam to create a better home environment for themselves. By building dams the beavers can raise water levels to create extensive wetlands which they can then live in.

 

Mice -Burrows, they are very very similar to rabbits apart from their burrows are much smaller.

Spiders- Webs, again this structure is more created by a spider to aid their living rather then to act as a home. It is also more of a structure in general than a den for the animal.

Squirrels -Tree cavities and leaf nests, they generally use the environment around them rather then building a nest from scratch. They simply add to the tree cavity, modifying their environment to make it more suitable.

Meerkats – Burrows, again they are very very similar to rabbits in creating a network of tunnels.

Cathedral Termites – Towers, this is perhaps the most bizarre of all the structures, a tower built up from mud and sand in which millions of insects live inside.

So after consider how different animals make very different dens i wanted to consider why animals make dens and how this then influences the structures of the dens. Animals create structures primarily for three reasons:

• to create protected habitats, homes.
• to catch prey and for foraging, traps.
• for communication between members of the species

The main reasons are the first two, they want to feel safe within their environment. This is why many animals only build dens when they have young as well as they feel the need to protect their young and want to create a space in which they feel they can do this.

In considering the structures being protection from predators, predators are attracted to animal built structures becasue of what the animals are trying to protect, food and offspring. The structures are meant to try and conceal these things from the predators wither by camouflage or by making it difficult to get to.  The camouflage element is what normally causes an animal to use materials from in their immediate environment as they want to blend into these surroundings.

Something i didn’t know about animals structures was how the animals act an engineers, using their structures to control the temperature of their surroundings. In warm environment a den underground will be extremely cool and shelter the animals from the intense glare of the sun. A really interesting example of this is the Oriental Hornet which uses something called a silk cap to trap the heat from the sun during the day and then at night when the temperature begins to drop the silk stores release an electric current to increase the temperature inside the den. Another interesting element which i hadn’t previously considered was how some animals make their own building materials. Some times of larvae cut out shapes from leaves to make the perfect den, rather then just using the leaves as they come and Paper wasps build a paper pulp themselves from their environment by mixing together many different ingredients from their environment.

After considering animal dens i think it has defiantly informed my den project in considering how similar some of the elements of den building are between humans and animals. Both use them as a form of protection and a reassurance of safety. They also both use the material in the environment around them for similar reasons. A den built by children is meant to be a secret, the whole point of it is to be a place away from adults and therefore to camouflage the den within the environment is a key element. This is also true for animals as they need to be protected from predators. I think in creating my dens which i was going to try and blend into the environment  i am going to consider closely the structure of birds nests, but mainly the ones which are large and just look like piles of leaves in the trees.