Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
As soon as they are hatched, the young termites are carried off into large compartments, where they are fed until they are old enough to take a part in the labor.
Among the Termites, those of one class certainly seem to act as soldiers, and among the true ants also some have comparatively immense heads and powerful jaws. It is doubtful, however, whether they form a real army.
The termites built their tunnels of regurgitated wood fibre up one wall, along the insulated electrical wires and down the central wooden roof support to the nest that housed their queen. She was a bloated white creature. They were constantly building, repairing and enlarging the tunnels and nest. Red ants contested possession of this area and we watched the perpetual battles unfold.
They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp we found them in several inches of water. The stomach is thick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, together with plenty of black mould and fragments of leaves, both green and dry.
Of course, our knowledge of the life of the invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is extremely limited; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we may glean a few facts of well-ascertained cooperation.
We were thankful that in our attack on the termites' fortress we had escaped with only a few bites; but probably had we remained longer in their neighbourhood we should have received far more severe injuries. Travelling on for several days, we emerged into some open ground, where we prepared to encamp.
A door as low as that of a tomb, and two or three holes pierced in the wall are the only openings in these huts, which look more like the work of termites than that of men.
The ant-nests were those of Yoruba and the Mendi country; not the tall, steepled edifices built by the termites with yellow clay, as in Eastern Africa, but an eruption of blue-black, hard-dried mud and mucus, resembling the miniature pagodas, policeman's lanterns, mushrooms, or umbrellas one or two feet high, here single, there double, common in Ashanti and Congo-land.
This, together with the long extensile tongue which is flat shaped and square at the extremity shows a peculiar design, answering to the habits of the animal. No doubt the extraordinary development of tongue is given to it for the same purpose as to the edentata of the ant-eating tribe to enable it to "lick up" the termites.
A lot of them are big, and a lot of them are fast. Once we were inside, we'd have no maneuverability to speak of. If the termites didn't get to us before we got inside. Suits won't do it here." He was a gambler, and a gambler doesn't buck impossible odds. "What could you do with the guns?" Trigger asked. "Not too much. They're not meant to take down a fortress.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking