[HN Gopher] A vast 4,000-year-old spatial pattern of termite mou...
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A vast 4,000-year-old spatial pattern of termite mounds (2018)
Author : Anon84
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-10-02 10:11 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cell.com)
| init7 wrote:
| In India, termite mounds are culturally revered and even
| worshipped.
|
| I was fascinated by permaculture and tried my hand at digging
| pits, swales and ponds. We would hire local earthmoving machines
| to dig large amounts of mud.
|
| Over time I observed that the operators of these machines would
| never - 1. Break a termite mound 2. Cut a ficus tree
|
| Long story short, we now try to incorporate termites into our
| work. And even rats!
|
| Normally, every pit you dig for water recharge eventually fills
| up with biomass and silt. We plant root based crops like sweet
| potato and tapioca inside the pits to attract rats and termites.
|
| They dig deep beneath the pits and multiply surface area of soil-
| air boundary millions of times over.
|
| I am beginning to belive that a lot of nature's algorithmic
| intelligence is in surface areas, folding, unfolding.
|
| A tree takes up a square metre on the ground but creates many
| football fields worth of leaf areas over. A termite mound does
| the same below.
|
| I heard that Sri Lanka had terminated rats and as a second order
| effect, their aquifers dried out. They later had to import rats.
|
| Hats off to termites - a very difficult to understand algorithm
| of mother nature.
| thedrexster wrote:
| This is fascinating, thank you for sharing! I suspect that we
| humans will never fully comprehend or appreciate how
| beautifully complex and interconnected our ecosystems truly
| are.
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