Most of us love our homes — women are usually very house-proud and woe betide a visitor who dares run a finger over the furniture and looks askance at the dust gathered on a fingertip. Even hairy-chested men want their private man-caves furnished with beer-stocked fridges and flat-screen TVs and, maybe, a gun cupboard. Self-respecting teenagers will pin large notices on their bedroom doors, saying “Private: Keep Out! No Admission!” Or, like the Begum of Awadh once did, on the “gates” of the Malcha Mahal in Delhi, “Trespassers will be gundown!” Home is where you — and your kids — may feel the most secure. So, what’s it like in the animal kingdom? You’d imagine that the big dadas, those guys at the top of the food chain, the carnivores, would sneer at such a sissy concept as a home to come back to every night. And you’d imagine that their tremulous, terrified prey would be the ones with multiple hideouts and boltholes in which they’d take shelter at the first signs of danger. Just the opposite. Tigers, bears and leopards stake out caves, which they return to every night. Lionesses, who live in prides with a lion or two as chief protector, will seek out the depths of bushes or caves in which to have their cubs. Wolves and foxes have dens. What seems even more sissy is that the great carnivores living in the temperate regions crawl into dens at the approach of winter and hibernate for six months to escape the cold. Herbivores, on the other hand — deer, antelope, wildebeest, giraffes, nilgai, blackbuck, elephants and rhinos — have no sheltered place to retire to every evening. Those living in temperate zones don’t hibernate en masse; they just wander southwards, where it’s warmer. But, yes, during the breeding season, they just drop their babies in plain sight of every predator in the district. Of course, there’s a reason why carnivores have homes and herbivores don’t: carnivore cubs are born blind and helpless. They need a safe, dry, shady sanctuary in order to survive. Also, it’s usually only their mom who looks after them and feeds them (wolves and foxes are exceptions). It is weeks before they’re capable of exploring on their own and, maybe, a couple of years before they can hunt solo. A tiger mom may be so paranoid about their safety that she has not one, but two or three residences lined up, where she can take her cubs if she feels one is compromised. Apart from caves, she might stake out the depths of a bamboo thicket, or, unfortunately, more frequently these days, the middle of a sugarcane field, which seems to be a hotspot for leopards too. How the herbivores must laugh at the fierce flesh-eaters who, in spite of their claws and canines, crawl into bat-infested caves and have their babies there as if it’s something shameful. Look at us, they must think, we live in the great outdoors and have our babies bang in the middle of a herd of a thousand others. Within hours of being dumped, our babies are up and about, able to keep up with us as we canter away across the plains. Also, since we all drop our babies at the same time, there are so many of them that each one has a better chance of surviving. We’re the real nomads — free to come and go as we like, usually where the grass grows green and lush. Ask anyone where birds live, and they’ll invariably answer, “in their nests, of course”. That’s not strictly true; most birds only build nests when they’re breeding: Nests are usually nothing but nurseries in which to bring up the brats. Some birds — such as owls, which may have problems with others if they appear during the day — do use holes and hollows in trees. What’s astonishing is the variety in nesting architecture. For some, a scrape in the ground suffices, sometimes lined, sometimes not. Others go in for the typical “cup” design with thin twiglets and soft lining. Some, like eagles, build huge ancestral mansions over generations, while others live in condominiums. Then, of course, there’s that serial bigamist, the baya, who weaves gorgeous flask shaped nests for first one, then two, then three, and, maybe, more wives in tandem. Holes and hollows are also in great demand by a number of species, including parakeets, mynas, barbets, woodpeckers and hornbills. Perhaps, the most possessive about their homes are those creatures which carry their homes on their backs. Snails, mollusks, turtles, tortoises and terrapins are among this lot, and it sure seems like a burden. If they’re being chased, they can’t clock more than one metre per day, so there’s no getting away. On the plus side, they don’t have to run at all: they just duck into their shells, which are usually strong enough to stand quite a battering. But this holds only if the hunter is not hungry for escargots or turtle soup.
