Ten species of bowerbirds in Australia and Papua New Guinea create elaborate structures out of twigs in order to court female birds. Although scientists have not yet described these actions as a form of aesthetically motivated, culturally important activities, it has been shown that individual bower birds have different styles and are motivated by an understanding of "beauty." 

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"It collects, arranges, and manipulates found objects into ornamental displays of as many as 1,000 pieces. These assemblages include organic and inorganic materials as diverse as flowers, berries, stones, shells, feathers, and dung. In admiring these displays, one might draw an analogy with the profusion of natural and artificial rarities that spill out of the frames of seventeenth-century still lifes, or that composed early modern cabinets of curiosity, a medium of display in which the now conventional boundaries between art and nature were not maintained. Bowerbirds collect objects to adorn their bowers, structures made of sticks and other organic matter constructed by the males. Not to be confused with nests, bowers follow a few different general designs that accommodate multimedia mating displays that, in addition to found objects, include song and dance. The decorative schemes of bowers within a species adhere to certain stylistic conventions, but they also vary considerably among individuals within the species." (Amstutz)

 

"With a few exceptions, evolutionary biologists have not explored bower displays as the product of individual, cultural, and aesthetically driven forms of expression. Rather, the intricate practices of bower construction and decoration have been mainly discussed in terms of their reproductive function, namely as an instinctual practice that the male engages in to attract a mate, signalling intelligence, physical strength, and superior foraging ability to the female, with the bower design itself offering her protection from sexual coercion. Although the visual extravagance and individuality of bower displays are to all intents and purposes in excess of their utilitarian function, the strict intention to create a work of art is absent or at least impossible to assess. In turn, art historians too have largely ignored this bird's creations, along with the creations of all nonhuman animals." (Amstutz)

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Sources:

 

Amstutz, N. (2021), The Avian Sense for Beauty: A Posthumanist Perspective on the Bowerbird. Art History, 44: 1038-1064. https://doi-org.libproxy2.usc.edu/10.1111/1467-8365.12617

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​Madden JR. Do bowerbirds exhibit cultures? Animal cognition. 2008;11(1):1-12. doi:10.1007/s10071-007-0092-5

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Diamond, Jared. “Animal Art: Variation in Bower Decorating Style among Male Bowerbirds Amblyornis Inornatus.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 83, no. 9 (1986): 3042–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26971.