Termite kingdom author profile, termite kingdom mysteries of termites

Termites are isoptera insects that live in groups. In its colony, there is a very strict grading system, which is fixed to a specific function, which is called the "termite kingdom".

The supreme rulers in the kingdom are the ant king and queen, who specialize in mating, laying eggs, and living a pampered life all year round. The builders in the kingdom are worker ants, who are responsible for the heavy tasks of nesting, road building, feeding, transporting water, protecting eggs and feeding, and never complaining about it. The Soldier Ant is a loyal defender of the kingdom, with its distinctive jowls forming saw-like scissor teeth to flank incoming enemies, and with a fearless fighting style, it will not flinch until it is killed in the line of duty.

In the termite kingdom, millions of members form a huge family, and the orderly organization and coordination among its members, the complex and peculiar ability to digest cellulose, the noisy scene that occurs during the annual breeding and wedding season, the superb nesting skills of the worker ants, and the ability of the queen to lay eggs at a high speed like a machine, seem to be unbelievable indeed. For more than 200 years, human research on termites in the fields of taxonomy, biology, physiology and ecology has gradually revealed the miraculous inside story of termite kingdoms, and has given them the ranks of the seven wonders of the universe today.

In sub-Saharan Africa, no matter where you go, whether it is in the jungle, grassland, roadside or behind the house, you can see reddish-brown mounds standing everywhere. This is not a natural pile of sand, nor a man-made mound, but a castle kingdom built by white ants.

This type of castle is commonly known as an ant hill or ant mound. Most ant hills are conical in shape and generally tall.

It is not uncommon to see four or five meters or ten meters. How are these ant hills built, what is the internal structure, and how do termites live in them?

To solve these mysteries, I asked a few friends to dig up an ant hill with their own hands.

That was when we were working in Uganda. After comparison, we chose a medium-sized ant hill near the station, which is said to be fourteen or fifteen years old. The mountain is about six meters high, and the circumference at the bottom is also about six meters.

On a clear morning, we drove to the scene with our tools. At first, we used pickaxes and shovels to dig, but the soil was too hard to dig at all. It turns out that termites used red clay brought from the ground, mixed with sawdust and grass collected from the ground, and mixed with their own saliva and other secretions.

These things are glued together, and after being scorched by the sun near the equator, they become building materials that are as hard as cement. In fact, we had anticipated this for a long time, so we not only drove the car, but also brought wire ropes. The wire rope is tied around the mountainside, and the car starts, adding full horsepower, and slowly pulls down the ant mountain.

At this time, I saw thousands of termites, bustling, and suddenly exposed to us.

Wang Li was born in June 1953 in Dandong City, on the banks of the Yalu River. He enlisted in the army in February 1969, transferred to the local government in 1993, and worked as an administrative manager in a large shopping mall in Beijing, and retired at the end of 2004. After retiring, he began to write, and published the short stories "Morning" and "Headless Pine" in "People's Liberation Army Literature and Art", and published the long story "Indelible".