Animal Architects: Nests, Dams and Hives

What this quiz asks

• Beavers build dams across streams mainly to do what?
• What shape are the cells in a honeybee comb?
• A beaver lodge, the family's home in the pond, is built mainly from what?
• In a classic orb web like this one, which threads are sticky?
• Male bowerbirds build and decorate a bower mainly to do what?
• How do male weaver birds turn strips of grass into their hanging nests?
• Weight for weight, some spider silk is stronger than steel.
• Common wasps build their nests from what?
• Select ALL of these birds that build their nests mainly from mud.
• Adélie penguins build their nests on the bare ground out of what?
• Did termite mounds inspire the cooling design of an office building in Zimbabwe?
• Order these animal constructions by typical size, smallest first.
• Which bird builds its nest almost entirely from its own hardened saliva, the key ingredient of bird's nest soup?
• Select ALL of these animals that live in homes dug underground.
• Which bird of southern Africa builds huge shared nests of grass, home to up to hundreds of birds and used for decades?
• Naked mole-rats dig their tunnels mainly with their front teeth.
• Caddisfly larvae live underwater in portable cases of sand, tiny stones or plant bits. What holds the pieces together?
• Magnetic termites in northern Australia build thin, wedge-shaped mounds lined up in which direction?
• A beaver dam spotted on satellite images in 2007 in Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park is roughly how many metres long?
• The male three-spined stickleback, a small fish, builds a nest of plant bits. What holds it together?