Why Birds Are the World’s Best Engineers

The term bird’s nest is often used to describe a messy arrangement, but in reality they are much more durable, yet no one is sure about the mechanisms behind them. Dr. Hunter King at University of Akron, Ohio studies the structural dynamics of nests in his lab. He wanted to find what it was about birds’ nests that make them more than just a bundle of sticks. Birds also build nests based on many factors, such as what they have available, the type of shelter they prefer, decorating to attract mates, etc. The experiment itself is compressing hundreds of bamboo skewers in a large cylinder, mimicking the somewhat random arrangement of a bird’s nest. By continuously compressing and releasing the skewers, the sticks slowly arranged themselves into a tighter and tighter formation, until it reached its “steady state hysteresis”. At this point, Dr. King found that pushing on them more had a stiff response, but sort of undid itself on release. This uneven spring characteristic might be the fundamental mechanism in bird nests. Later, he plans to use Zebra finches to test nests made with different materials to see how their properties might change.

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