This is how they carve out their niche in the world. Beavers push out their boundary and make dams. Spiders make webs. Hermit crabs find shells. Gophers dig tunnels.
Termites work as a unit to build a castle.
The male Australian bowerbird builds a small courtship canyon. He then adds bits of bright blue objects to impress his mate. In most species, the genes hard wire in the skills and traits to make all sorts of boundary changes. We've seen that our forebears' genes could not keep up with some of the threats to their lives. We also saw how they started to use thought to attack prey from a distance by throwing rocks.