Nature's Three-Part Series ANIMAL HOMES Begins 4/8

Animals, like humans, need a place they can call home to provide a safe and stable place to raise a family, but they go about building it in entirely different ways. Whether it is a bird's nest, bear den, beaver lodge or spider web, these are homes of great complexity, constructed from a wide range of natural as well as man-made materials. This three-part series investigates just how animals build their remarkable homes around the globe and the intriguing behaviors and social interactions that take place in and around them.

Hosting the series is ecologist Chris Morgan (Siberian Tiger Quest, Bears of the Last Frontier), who serves as guide and real estate agent. He evaluates and deconstructs ANIMAL abodes, their materials, location, neighborhood and aesthetics. In addition to Morgan opening the doors of ANIMAL homes in the wild, he is also in studio showing examples of the incredible diversity of nests and their strength, even trying his hand at building a few. ANIMAL Homes airs on three consecutive Wednesdays, April 8, 15 and 22, 2015 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). After broadcast, the episodes will be available for online streaming at pbs.org/nature.

The series features a blend of CGI, animation, CT scans and signature blueprint graphics to highlight engineering principles inside the structures. A variety of cameras, including tiny HD versions, capture unprecedented views inside ANIMAL homes without disturbing natural behavior. When appropriate, filmmakers shoot behaviors in slow motion and use infrared and time lapse to reveal how animals create their structures over time and through the seasons.

Over the course of three episodes, the series delves into the amazing flexibility ANIMAL architects display, the clever choices they make and the ingenious ways they deal with troublesome habitats.

ANIMAL Homes

Program 1: The Nest

Wednesday, April 8 at 8 p.m.

Bird nests come in all shapes and sizes, crafted from an inexhaustible diversity of materials, including fur, grasses, leaves, mosses, sticks and twigs, bones, wool, mud and spider silk. Quite a few also contain man-made materials - colorful twine, bits of wire, even plastic bags. Each one is a remarkable work of art, built with just a beak! We begin with a museum collection of nests and branch out to scenes in the wild all over the world, where birds arrive at diverse nesting grounds to collect, compete for, reject, steal and begin to build with carefully selected materials, crafting homes for the all-important task of protecting their eggs and raising their young.

ANIMAL Homes

Program 2: Location, Location, Location

Wednesday, April 15 at 8 p.m.

Finding a good base of operations is key to successfully raising a family. One must find the correct stream or tree, the correct building materials, neighbors and sometimes tenants. In the wild, every home is a unique DIY project, every head of household is a designer and engineer. Animated blueprints and tiny cameras chart the building plans and progress of beavers, saltmarsh sparrows, woodrats, gray jays, hawks and black-chinned HUMMINGBIRDS examining layouts and cross sections, evaluating the technical specs of their structures and documenting their problem-solving skills. ANIMAL architecture provides remarkable insights into ANIMAL consciousness, creativity and innovation.

ANIMAL Homes

Program 3: ANIMAL Cities

Wednesday, April 22 at 8 p.m.

Animals congregate in huge colonies partly out of necessity and partly for the security that numbers provide. Puffins in the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, form nesting colonies of more than a million, tucked in between hundreds of thousands of other seabirds, which provides shared information about food sources and reduces the odds of individual birds being attacked. But, colonies are also useful for predators. Social spiders in Ecuador work together to capture prey 20 times the size an individual might subdue on its own. For others, communal living provides perfect multi-generational caregiving options or the opportunity to build enormous cities - such as the acre-wide, multi-million-citizen colonies built by leaf-cutter ants in Costa Rica.

ANIMAL Homes was filmed both in the U.S. and abroad. The U.S. locations include the Connecticut coast (ospreys and saltmarsh sparrows), North Carolina (ducks), Hawaii (albatross), outside Burlington, Vermont (ravens), Maryland (black bears) and Jackson Hole, Wyoming (beavers).

Nature is a production of THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET. For Nature, Fred Kaufman is executive producer. ANIMAL Homes is a production of Coneflower Productions and THIRTEEN Productions LLC in co-production with Terra Mater Factual Studios for WNET.

Nature pioneered a television genre that is now widely emulated in the broadcast industry. Throughout its history, Nature has brought the natural world to millions of viewers. The series has been consistently among the most-watched primetime series on public television.

Nature has won over 700 honors from the television industry, the international wildlife film communities and environmental organizations, including 12 Emmys and three Peabodys. The series received two of wildlife film industry's highest honors: the Christopher Parsons Outstanding Achievement Award given by the Wildscreen Festival and the Grand Teton Award given by the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Recently, the International Wildlife Film Festival honored Nature executive producer Fred Kaufman with its Lifetime Achievement Award for Media.

PBS.org/nature is the award-winning web companion to Nature, featuring streaming episodes, filmmaker interviews, teacher's guides and more.

Support for this Nature program was made possible in part by the Arnhold Family in memory of Clarisse Arnhold, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Estate of Elizabeth A. Vernon, the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust, the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, the Arlene and Milton D. Berkman Philanthropic Fund, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers.

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