The second episode of WILD WORKERS takes some of the individual stories of those animals that are homebuilders. Some work as individuals while others work as teams, yet each construction is remarkable in its own way and the architectural challenges that are both met and overcome are remarkable. Some of the master builders have been busy at work for far longer than modern humans have existed.In the forests of south-east Asia there is one master builder that bends the trees to its will – the orangutan, a structural engineer who every night builds a sleeping platform that must withstand the weight of the adult, and if the architect is a female also the weight of her offspring.

Other master builders construct shelters using materials they produce themselves. Moth caterpillars spin their own silk, in one case over 1000 metres in a single strand, to weave a strong cocoon in which they are safe from predators and can undertake the metamorphosis that takes them to the next stage of their life. All birds need nests of some kind, either elaborate or simple. In southern Africa weaver birds build elaborate woven nests using grasses and strips of palm leaves. The master architects of the bird world are bowerbirds who craft masterpieces from twigs. A simple bower can be two parallel lines of planted twigs to impress a female, however, the master builder of bower birds lives in the dark and mysterious forests of West Papua.

In the Australian deserts a small bandicoot, the bilby, is an expert tunneler excavating several burrows that other desert mammals also use. As well as being a home, the diggings also help the land itself. The disturbance mixes underground soils with the surface, improving soil quality and trapping any water from the infrequent rainfall. Seeds are trapped and germinate helping plant distribution in the arid fringes of the Australian deserts.Perhaps the most incredible home builder is a mollusc that has hardly changed in 500 million years. The nautilus builds a shell using its own DNA and each day as a minute layer of new shell is laid down the mollusc can sense the patterns and replicate them. Incredibly the shell is a part of the nautiluses genetic memory. However, the greatest master builder is one who combines all the skills of a lumberjack, a carpenter, an architect, a surveyor and a hydro-engineer – the beaver. An aquatic rodent living in the waterways of North America this busy builder alters the flow of rivers and create lakes that change the landscape. Beavers are architects on a grand scale. They build for the future, their constructions withstand the tests of time, they change the flow of rivers and alter the world around them.

This stimulating episode shows how around the globe wild workers come in all shapes and sizes, and what they build echoes their needs, no matter how small or how big.

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