Researchers Will Soon Release 500,000 Termites Onto A House For Science
Researchers Will Soon Release 500,000 Termites Onto A House For Science
Your average Joe cannot tell you much about termites, except that they have an appetite for timber-constructed homes. Surprisingly, there are many basic questions relating to termites that even expert entomologists cannot answer. Termites are relatively understudied when compared to other common types of insects. You would think that experts would know more about the oldest social insects on earth since they cause billions of dollars in damages every year just in the United States. Many people are curious to know how long it takes for a particular termite species to render a home unlivable. Unfortunately, experts do not have the data necessary to predict how quickly a colony of termites can destroy a house. This is why the National Pest Management Association has funded a project that will allow five hundred thousand termites to go wild on an uninhabited replica of a house. The researchers heading up the study will use multiple cameras to record how termites behave when colonizing and infesting a home. Termites have never been recorded while infesting a house, so the data gathered from this study will help answer some questions concerning the basics of termite behavior.
There are several videos available online that show sped-up footage of termites as they are eating away at a piece of wood. Although these videos may be fun to watch, they are not useful to researchers who want to learn more about the communication that takes place in termite colonies while they infest homes. These online videos also fail to show how termites access certain areas of a home. The several high definition cameras that are mounted in various areas within the experimental home will show how termites crawl through tiny crevices in order to access new sources of wood. The HD videos will also reveal how termite colonies divide responsibilities among individual colony members, and what kind of a roll the queen plays in home-infestations. The house being used in the experiment is a smaller replica of a basic-looking home. Each camera will record every nook and cranny of the house until it is decimated by the five hundred thousand termites. The cameras will even capture footage of termite behavior behind the home’s walls.
Have you ever seen a video showing termites eating away at a piece of wood?