Tropical termite palace

Imagine you are a project manager by royal appointment and your client’s brief calls for the construction of a spacious eco-friendly multi-story palace in the tropics.

Here are the specifications:

·       The royal suite sited near the lobby – the king and queen will be too busy mating (or how about laying  30,000 eggs per day?) to enjoy the penthouse views.

·       The sky’s the limit but we’ll settle for 6 metres max. with a convenient rooftop cemetery – the dead have got time for the view.

·       The design must incorporate arches, access tunnels, chimneys, ventilation shafts, nursery and other chambers, complete with insulation

·       Serviced by underground freeways

·       A fungal garden/sewerage treatment works to process faeces for further digestion

·       The building materials available are limited to: earth, saliva and excrement

Labour hire? 

The Queen controls the castes by exuding the appropriate chemicals so that an army of workers will develop to totally focus on the tasks at hand: cleaning, maintenance, construction, hospitality, child-care, water supply and climate control. There will be no distractions like sex for these guys but they have one feature you should be aware of – they are virtually blind!

On-site security?                                                      

No problem. The Queen will also provide soldiers armed with either powerful jaws or chemical weaponry to retard enemy approaches.

Catering?                                                    

There’s plenty of dead wood lying around and microscopic organisms in the gut will assist in the digestion of cellulose.

Hang on… we forgot to give you the site plan.                                

We’re in the tropics with its torrential rains and flooding and possibly inland with extreme temperature variations. Among 2300 species of termite we find the Amitermes meridionalis or magnetic termite, common in northern Australia.  The blind workers cleverly align the termite mound with magnetic north.  Why?  So that the flat sides capture the minimum amount of mid-day heat from the sun!

Now that we’ve built such a magnificent edifice why would anyone want to leave? Life goes on and every year, mature fertile alates swarm, all at the same time, try to survive predators and establish a new colony after a brief flight. The prospective new king follows his queen into a new nest where they will shed their wings, establish quarters and start to breed their staff.

So who designed this incredibly multi-skilled creature, wrote its program, and taught it: family planning, surveying, road building, construction, defence, aviation and hi-tech recycling?...before we had any idea ourselves!

 

Acknowledgement: Samuel J. Hornsey

Photo credit:  chennaipestcontrol.co.in