Far, far away, among the expanses of South Africa, lives a very daring little bird called the Common Social Weaver. You can’t think of a better name – evolution has taught these birds to build collective hostel nests.
Weavers build their nests together, uniting the efforts not of dozens of birds, but of several generations! Such reliable constructions are obtained that the “apartments” in them are transferred from great-grandfathers to great-grandchildren.
There are cases where nests more than a century old have been found – the tree itself could dry out a long time ago in a hot climate, and the nest continued to hold.
The technology of building a sleeping-nest is complex and confusing, it is multi-storeyed and has premises for various purposes.
There are personal rooms for “newlyweds” and breeding, and rooms for 3-5 birds, and corridors in which a snake protection system is installed.
Weavers know how to fix the pointed twigs so that they block the path of reptiles, like stakes in a medieval castle.
And each nest has more than a dozen false and true movements, and several hundred birds can live inside at the same time.
A nest can be 8 m long, 2 to 2.5 m high and weigh more than a ton! Birds have learned to build them even on electric poles. But why do weavers need such models?
It’s simple: in a desert area, the temperature, humidity and pressure drops are very high, and a stable microclimate is always maintained inside the nest.
It does not flood with rain and does not bring dust, birds are not afraid of frost, drought or predators.
And everything would be fine, if not for two buts. Sometimes some dangerous predators manage to bypass obstacles, and then the birds themselves inside the labyrinth nest get into a trap from which not everyone has time to get out.
And in other cases, the weavers choose the wrong support, and under the weight of a giant nest, the tree simply breaks, and the hard work of the little birds goes nowhere.
