Eight-foot tall termite mounds as old as the PYRAMIDS that cover an area larger than Britain are discovered in the Amazon (and they can be seen from space!)
- The 4000-year-old mounds cover an area greater than Great Britain
- Mounds are not nests but are the result of the insects’ excavation of tunnels
- Termites’ activities over thousands of years resulted in large soil deposits
Scientists have found eight-foot tall termite mounds as old as the pyramids hidden in the Amazon.
The 4000-year-old mounds cover an area greater than Great Britain and can even be seen from Google Earth.
The 200 million cone-shaped mounds are not nests but are the result of the insects’ slow and steady excavation of a network of interconnected underground tunnels.
The termites’ activities over thousands of years required enough excavated soil to fill Wembley Stadium 2,500 times over.
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Scientists have found eight-foot tall termite mounds as old as the pyramids hidden in the Amazon. The 4000-year-old mounds cover an area greater than Great Britain and can even be seen from Google Earth
WHAT DID THEY FIND?
The 4000-year-old mounds cover an area greater than Great Britain and can even be seen from Google Earth.
The termites’ activities over thousands of years has resulted in huge quantities of soil deposited in approximately 200 million cone-shaped mounds.
The mounds are largely hidden from view in the fully deciduous, thorny-scrub forests which are unique to northeastern Brazil.
They’d only really come into view by ‘outsiders,’ including scientists, when some of the lands were cleared for pasture in recent decades.
Termites normally build their huge skyscraper mounds to protect against predators and ventilate their homes, by allowing fresh air to get in to their nests.
But the mounds in Brazil are just discarded earth, as termites there have evolved to live in airless chambers.
Instead the mountains of earth are visual evidence of the massive tunnelling exercise needed to reach the leaves the termites eat, which fall in the forest only once a year following the rainy season.
The tiny insects have excavated a billion cubic metres of soil so they can access a vast network of tunnels and never need to travel more than three feet in the open air, where they risk being eaten by giant ants.
Each mound is around 8 feet (2.5m) tall and 30 feet (9m) across, according to the research published in Current Biology.
‘These mounds were formed by a single termite species that excavated a massive network of tunnels to allow them to access dead leaves to eat safely and directly from the forest floor,’ said lead researcher Stephen Martin of the University of Salford.
‘The amount of soil excavated is over 10 cubic kilometres, equivalent to 4,000 great pyramids of Giza, and represents one of the biggest structures built by a single insect species’, he said.
‘This is apparently the world’s most extensive bioengineering effort by a single insect species,’ said Roy Funch of Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana in Brazil.
‘Perhaps most exciting of all – the mounds are extremely old – up to 4,000 years, similar to the ages of the pyramids.’
The mounds, found in the Caatinga rainforest, are largely hidden from view in the fully deciduous, thorny-scrub forests which are unique to northeastern Brazil.
They’d only really come into view by ‘outsiders,’ including scientists, when some of the lands were cleared for pasture in recent decades.
Soil samples collected from the centres of 11 mounds and dated indicated that the mounds were filled 690 to 3,820 years ago.
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That makes them about as old as the world’s oldest known termite mounds in Africa.
Termites normally build their huge skyscraper mounds to protect against predators and ventilate their homes, by allowing fresh air to get in to their nests.
The mounds are not nests but are the result of the insects’ slow and steady excavation of a network of interconnected underground tunnels
The termites’ activities over thousands of years has resulted in huge quantities of soil deposited in approximately 200 million cone-shaped mounds
The mounds, found in the Caatinga rainforest, are largely hidden from view in the fully deciduous, thorny-scrub forests which are unique to northeastern Brazil
But the mounds in Brazil are just discarded earth, as termites there have evolved to live in airless chambers.
Instead the mountains of earth are visual evidence of the massive tunnelling exercise needed to reach the leaves the termites eat, which fall in the forest only once a year following the rainy season.
The tiny insects have excavated a billion cubic metres of soil so they can access a vast network of tunnels and never need to travel more than three feet in the open air, where they risk being eaten by giant ants.
Pictured is the distribution of the nests. Core areas are pictured in orange. The tiny insects have excavated a billion cubic metres of soil so they can access a vast network of tunnels
Pictured are the mounds from space (black dots to indicate each one). Soil samples collected from the centres of 11 mounds and dated indicated that the mounds were filled 690 to 3,820 years ago
‘It’s incredible that, in this day and age, you can find an ‘unknown’ biological wonder of this sheer size and age still existing, with the occupants still present,’ Dr Martin said.
The researchers say there are many questions still to pursue.
For instance, no one knows how these termite colonies are physically structured because a queen chamber of the species has never been found.
The tiny insects have excavated a billion cubic metres of soil so they can access a vast network of tunnels and never need to travel more than three feet in the open air, where they risk being eaten by giant ants (stock image)
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