"Did you know the natural world is a construction zone? Amazing animals all over the world are building all kinds of structures every single day. This fascinating, fact-filled book will captivate young scientists and naturalists and have them looking out for animal construction projects happening in their own backyards!"--

Looks at why animals build, explores the building processes of a variety of species, and discusses how a study of animal building behavior can provides an understanding of the human mind.

Collects photographs of structures created by animals, from the six-foot-high hills of tiny red ants to the colorfully decorated courtship arenas of the bowerbird, showcasing the connections between human and animal architecture.

"Information about how animals build their homes, for beginner readers"--

A fantastic, original exploration of how animals build their homes and the fascinating structures they create.From gladiator frogs to chimpanzees, learn about how animals all over the world build their homes. Each spread contains a beautiful, colourful illustration of each animal and its home, plus a unique fold-out information panel, with stats and a simple architectural diagram showcasing the creation of the 'architect'. Look inside chimpanzee nests, beaver dams, termite mounds, stork nests and many more - and get to know the clever animals who build them!

We Build Our Homes is a beautifully illustrated picture book exploring the incredible structures built by animals and the reasons why they build them. Each spread looks at a different animal, told as though from their viewpoint.

From hermit crabs that make a home out of anything they can find to tiny termites that build tall towers, animals of all kinds are architects! In this engaging nonfiction reader, elementary children will learn about these amazing animal architects and the things they build for habitation and camouflage through vivid images, stimulating facts, informational text, a helpful glossary, and a reference list of useful websites.

From termite mounds that in relative terms are three times as tall as a skyscraper, to the elaborate nests of social birds and the deadly traps of spiders, the constructions of the animal world can amaze and at times humble our own engineering and technology. But how do creatures with such small brains build these complex structures? What drives them to do it? Which skills are innate and which learned? Here, Mike Hansell looks at the extraordinary structures that animals build - whether homes, traps, or courtship displays - and reveals the biology behind their behaviour. He shows how small-brained animals achieve complex feats in a small-brained way, by repeating many simple actions and using highly evolved self-secreted materials. On the other hand, the building feats or tool use of large-brained animals, such as humans or chimps, require significantly more complex and costly behaviour. We look at wasp's nests, leaf-cutting ants, caddisflies and amoebae, and even the extraordinary bower bird, who seduces his mate with a decorated pile of twigs, baubles, feathers and berries. Hansell explores how animal structures evolved over time, how insect societies emerge, how animals can alter their wider habitat, and even whether some animals have an aesthetic sense.

Animal behavior has long been a battleground between the competing claims of nature and nurture, with the possible role of cognition in behavior as a recent addition to this debate. There is an untapped trove of behavioral data that can tell us a great deal about how the animals draw from these neural strategies: The structures animals build provide a superb window on the workings of the animal mind. Animal Architects examines animal architecture across a range of species, from those whose blueprints are largely innate (such as spiders and their webs) to those whose challenging structures seem to require intellectual insight, planning, and even aesthetics (such as bowerbirds' nests, or beavers' dams). Beginning with instinct and the simple homes of solitary insects, James and Carol Gould move on to conditioning; the "cognitive map" and how it evolved; and the role of planning and insight. Finally, they reflect on what animal building tells us about the nature of human intelligence-showing why humans, unlike many animals, need to build castles in the air.