In the rainforests of Australia and Papua New Guinea, male bowerbirds do something almost no other animal does: they make art. The male doesn’t just build a nest - he builds a “bower,” a separate structure used purely to impress females.
He’ll weave a little hallway or hut out of twigs and grasses, then spend weeks collecting brightly colored objects to decorate it: flowers, berries, shiny beetles, feathers, stolen bottle caps, scraps of plastic. He sorts them by color - one species likes blue so much it gathers every blue thing it can find - and arranges them in neat patterns.
Some species even use perspective. The Great Bowerbird lines up his trinkets from smallest at the front to largest at the back, so that when a female looks down his “avenue” the floor appears to keep going - and he looks bigger and closer than he really is. It’s basically a stage trick, performed by a bird.
