Termites as old as the pyramids of Egypt can be seen from the space

THermit mounds generally survive the colonies that built them. It was therefore doubly surprising to recently discover thousands of insects among monoliths of land discovered in northeastern Brazil. These elaborate mounds, described Monday in Cellwere the initial surprise – until recently, they were hidden by thorny scrub forests. It is obvious that tens of millions of conical mounds have covered this part of the world for thousands of years.

In the new study, an international team of scientists says the mounds cover a complex underground network – tunnels allowing termites, guided by pheromones, to pass from one mound to the other, exploiting a supply food in rotten dead leaves. Co-author of the study, Roy Funch, Ph.D. of the Estadual Universidade de Feira de Santana in Brazil describes mounds as "the world's largest bioengineering effort for a single species 'insect".

This vast range of termite mounds is shown from an aerial view in the video above. There are about 200 million of these mounds, each about 2.5 meters high and 9 meters wide. Regularly spaced stacks look like polka dots and cover a region the size of Britain.

The mounds themselves – examined by Funch and his colleagues using a combination of satellite surveys and earth excavations – have been there for thousands of years. The analysis of soil samples revealed that the oldest mounds were built about 3,820 years ago, which means that termites began to build these eusocial colonies at about the same time as humans. built the pyramids of Giza.

The working theory behind the existence of the mounds is that they are a byproduct of the effort of a single termite species to build a network of tunnels, which would bring them closer to the leafy dinners. As termites built their tunnels, piles of dirt accumulated. These dirt deposits mark equidistant locations and create a spatial pattern similar to that of Namibia. fairy circles. The mounds contain no internal structure, but just a central tunnel that descends into the earth and intersects with other underground tunnels and narrow tunnels containing dead leaves or more termites.

Unlike other termites, they have not revealed any nesting sites and do not appear to be used as a ventilation system. Mysteriously, no queen's room was found either – and in turn, no queen. Termites exist as self-organized systems in which each insect is divided into one of three social castes: winged soldiers, workers and termites that are there to reproduce. Termite queens lay about 20,000 eggs a day and can reach the age of 20.

But it is not because it has not been found that scientists are working on a field the size of Michigan. It will take time to examine a living colony that is part of an old network and it is an opportunity that scientists do not take lightly. "It's amazing," says the co-author Stephen Martin, Ph.D., "Today you can find an" unknown "biological wonder of this size and age still in existence, with the occupants still present.