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Culture may play a role in how birds build collectively in the Kalahari Desert

Researchers analyzed more than 400 structures built by 43 different groups of White-browed Sparrow-Weavers in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. These birds live communally, and the entire cohort works together to build a nest and multiple roosts from grass. The group’s dominant female then lays eggs in the nest, which has a long, tubelike entrance. Individual birds slumber nearby in the U-shaped roosts, which have both an entrance and an exit.

The scientists found that different gatherings of birds, even those living only a few meters from one another, built very different tube structures.