BY A H

A HUMAN HABITATINSPIRED BY HOW

THE JAGUAR AND THE CHIMPANZEE LIVE IN THE RAINFOREST

THE PROBLEM

• The rainforest is an incredible place. The rainforest is loaded with food and nutrients. In the rainforest there are a lot of our drugs and medicines come from plants in the rainforest. The rainforest is a dangerous place, with bugs and predators that would like to eat you for lunch. Animals have lived in the jungle for many years and they evolved to survive. • Some of the things that keep them alive and safe are behaviors,

like where they live and sleep. Other things are features of their bodies that protect them from the weather or help them to stay hidden from predators. I looked at both the jaguar and the chimpanzee for inspiration to design a home for human in the rainforest.

THE LOCATION

• I chose the rainforest as the location for my human habitat. It gets more rain than any other place in the world and it stays warm all year long. As a result, a lot of things grow in the rainforest and they grow very well. The floor of the rainforest is filled with decomposing plants, animals and bugs that love to decompose things. With all of the bugs, bigger animals have a lot to eat so there is a wide variety of snakes and mammals that eat the bugs and each other. To build a habitat for humans, we needed a place that would keep them safe from danger.

THE ANIMALS

• When I went on a field trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo, I looked at a lot of different animals but decided to study the jaguar and the chimpanzee further for inspiration for my rainforest habitat. The chimpanzee’s scientific name is (Pan troglodytes). The jaguar’s scientific name is (Panthera onca), and Native Americans called it, “he who kills with one leap”.

INSPIRATION 1- THE CHIMPANZEE

• I will mimic the structures built by chimpanzees. The chimpanzee spends a lot of their time in the trees where they can see things that approach them.

• They also sleep in the trees. It is safer for them to sleep and live in the trees, away from the bugs and predators that can’t climb trees. What inspired me to choose the chimpanzee and the jaguar was that I wanted to see how they live in the rainforest and what makes it a dangerous place to live and survive in.    

APPLICATION 1- THE HABITAT DESIGN

• I decided to design the house so that it is up high in a tree. This will keep it away from the rainforest floor bugs and it will allow us to be safe from all the dangerous animals on the ground. We will still have to worry about the bugs, snakes, and jaguars in the trees, but this is much less than having to also worry about the animals that can climb trees.

DRAWING 1 - TREEHOUSE

INSPIRATION 2 – THE JAGUAR

• The Jaguar’s fur has a special pattern that helps it to stay hidden. The irregular shaped spots in the jaguar are called “rosettes” because they are shaped like roses. For my home in the rainforest, when we are sleeping we want to be safe so I will make the outside of our house blend in with the surroundings. This will help us to hide from jaguars and other predators that are looking for a dinner meal.

APPLICATION 2 – THE HABITAT DESIGN

• To make the house blend in, we will decorate it with bark and leaves from the trees where we build the house. Like the jaguar’s fur, we will space things randomly on the walls and underneath the floor so that it doesn’t stand out. The jaguar’s fur has random curves, spots, and lines that make it look like shadows of the sun shining through leaves, or a pile of sticks.   

DRAWING 2 – CAMOUFLAGE

SOURCES

• Rainforest Animals, 13 December 2015: http://www.rainforestanimals.net • Jaguar, National Geographic, 13 December 2015:http

://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/jaguar/ • Chimpanzee Facts, 2 July 2012:

http://www.chimpanzeefacts.org