Misplaced Pages

Syntermes dirus

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Treeenthusiast (talk | contribs) at 21:55, 24 December 2024 (A remarkable species, with reference.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 21:55, 24 December 2024 by Treeenthusiast (talk | contribs) (A remarkable species, with reference.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Syntermes dirus is a species of termite native to Brazil which forage in the open for dead leaves, twigs etcetera. They build mounds up to eight feet (2.5 meters) high which may require 4,000 years to complete. One complex of mounds, termed a "megacity" covers 88,800 square miles (230,000 square kilometers), larger than the island of Great Britain, and is said to be visible from space. Their activities have thus far involved the moving of ten cubic kilometers (2.4 cubic miles) of soil: Enough to make four thousand stacks each the size of the Pyramid of Cheops.

  1. Craig Glenday, ed. (2021). Guinness Book of Records -2022. London: SVP Global Publishing. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-913484-10-1.