Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry So it's
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, how d Hey, hey, this is
Speaker 1: a fan recommendation. Really. Yes. Aaron Mullins from the Max
Speaker 1: Funcan Cruise that I went on last year. Uh works
Speaker 1: with termites. I believe, like a termite circus. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: runs a termite circus. No, but he said, he said, dude,
Speaker 1: you got it. You should do termites. He said they're
Speaker 1: really fascinating. They are pretty fascinating. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it, buddy, and uh, here we are.
Speaker 1: So Aaron Mullins, this one's for you. Way to go. Mullins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a good suggestion. I mean it's termites. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many people went, I'm not listening
Speaker 1: to that one. Well, they just lost out. And all
Speaker 1: of you, dear listeners, the ones who are hearing our
Speaker 1: voices talk about termites, you are very blessed. Yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact of the podcast thing that we
Speaker 1: like to do. I had a hard time picking out
Speaker 1: like five or six don't give them away. Let's just
Speaker 1: take him in striy it. Huh, it's a chuck. Are
Speaker 1: you familiar with this one. He's not gonna have a
Speaker 1: good intro. I got a good intro. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, this is a Tracy Wilson joint. She had
Speaker 1: a pretty good intro. She points out that termites are
Speaker 1: kind of paradoxes, or the concept of termites is a paradox,
Speaker 1: and that they are extremely um vulnerable to changes in temperature,
Speaker 1: changes in humidity. They can dry out and die. They
Speaker 1: die like dehydration pretty easy. Yeah, they're not super hardy yet.
Speaker 1: They they but they can be. They can. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they can also like fell an entire house given enough time. Um.
Speaker 1: They they develop wings, some of them do. But they're
Speaker 1: not really good at flying a lot like cicadas. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember, like we saw those things firsthand, just flying
Speaker 1: terribly um. And then soldier termites for example, Yeah, very strong,
Speaker 1: huge mandibles and pincers. Yeah. Yeah, they can't even feed themselves.
Speaker 1: Were like big babies. There's just a lot of things
Speaker 1: going on termites. You think you understand them, Oh, but
Speaker 1: what about this part? Bam, that's kind of what happens
Speaker 1: when you look into them. That's why they're fascinating. That's
Speaker 1: why Aaron Mullins. Mullins recommended it. Yeah, I agree. Should
Speaker 1: we get into it? You know what said is there's
Speaker 1: just gonna be an awkward pause in the podcast because
Speaker 1: people couldn't see me looking at you, like, what's the
Speaker 1: guy's name? That's right, we can we can tighten that
Speaker 1: up with the magic of editing. Jerry, will you tighten
Speaker 1: that up? No, says Jerry. Alright, so yes, let's get
Speaker 1: into this, Chuck. Let's talk termites, all right? I guess. Uh.
Speaker 1: Usually when we do these, um we've done cocka, roaches
Speaker 1: and fleas and uh or do we do flease? We
Speaker 1: did ticks? Yeah, we've done ticks for done bees. I
Speaker 1: don't have we not done fleaze? We need to do that?
Speaker 1: Are you sure? Yeah? Remember tis was like the most
Speaker 1: boring episode we've ever done. No, but people went crazy
Speaker 1: for it. It's because of the T shirt offer. Remember
Speaker 1: if you've made it all the way through that, when
Speaker 1: you've got a free T shirt instead of anyway, we
Speaker 1: usually start with anatomy, and that's a good place for termites.
Speaker 1: Obviously they are insects. And you're gonna find them. You
Speaker 1: can really find them anywhere where it doesn't you don't
Speaker 1: go into a hard freeze in the winter. But they
Speaker 1: are most common in tropical environments, were most abundant. I guess,
Speaker 1: well they make their range all the way into temperate
Speaker 1: climates though too. Yeah. I mean we've got here of course,
Speaker 1: and U we freeze in the winter. Yeah, but like
Speaker 1: the ground doesn't freeze all the way through. No, no,
Speaker 1: and not for prolonged periods either. Um, they look like
Speaker 1: ants a lot of times, but they're not even that
Speaker 1: closely related to ants. Well, no, they're more closely related
Speaker 1: to coca roaches. I think that's where they came from. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they've been around for about fifty million years rs.
Speaker 1: And there are nearly three thousand species of termites. So
Speaker 1: that's just a little background. We should also see termites
Speaker 1: are extraordinarily social insects. That's how they survive. Like one
Speaker 1: termite is, like we said, an extremely vulnerable organism, but
Speaker 1: if you put hundreds of thousands or millions upon millions
Speaker 1: of these things together in a single colony, they get
Speaker 1: the job done. Yeah, they are social, and there's they're
Speaker 1: very structured. Um, some similarities to bees, and that there
Speaker 1: is a definite social ladder uh in there there. It's
Speaker 1: called a cast actually for termites. And they all have
Speaker 1: little jobs that they do, and they all have their
Speaker 1: distinct physical features one from another, which is kind of
Speaker 1: neat um. So I guess we can start with the
Speaker 1: reproducers or reproductives, the egg layers. Right in in any colony,
Speaker 1: you have one king and one queen, and they're um
Speaker 1: easily distinguishable from the rest because they're the only ones
Speaker 1: who are really dark in color. The reason they're the
Speaker 1: only ones that are dark in colors because they're the
Speaker 1: only ones that are fully mature in the entire colony,
Speaker 1: the only ones. It's crazy. That's one of the facts
Speaker 1: of the show for me. Bam. Yeah, but the king
Speaker 1: and queen aren't the only ones who can lay eggs
Speaker 1: soldiers and workers, which will talk about in a second.
Speaker 1: They're both sterile, They got nothing going on with the
Speaker 1: sexy stuff, nothing, But the king and queen have kind
Speaker 1: of backup support with laying eggs, their secondary and tertiary reproducers. Tertiary,
Speaker 1: by the way, is like one of the great overlooked
Speaker 1: wonderful words. I love that word me too. Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: to me another fact of the podcast. The King and
Speaker 1: the queen have eyes and the rest of them are blind. Okay,
Speaker 1: not all of them are blind though, because I've read
Speaker 1: somewhere else that that wasn't quite right. Yeah I did too,
Speaker 1: man that basically, if you um develop wings, what is
Speaker 1: it an ally um you when you develop those wings,
Speaker 1: you all so developed eyes, You're like, holy cow, I
Speaker 1: can see now because I got these wings. I guess
Speaker 1: if you're gonna fly, you're gonna see, right, So I
Speaker 1: guess at the at the point where there's just a
Speaker 1: king and queen, there's no allies. The king and queen
Speaker 1: maybe the only ones with eyes. And it's also possible
Speaker 1: that Tracy was talking about specific species, like there's three
Speaker 1: thousand species possible some species only the king and queen
Speaker 1: have eyes and came in time. The rest the blind ones.
Speaker 1: That is, navigate with smell scent and with moisture trails
Speaker 1: and moisture and saliva is big in the termite world.
Speaker 1: As we will find throughout the podcast, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of regurgitating and spitting out to accomplish their needs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it is kind of magical. Yea.
Speaker 1: Not only do they use it to keep their eggs moist,
Speaker 1: they salivate on their eggs. They also use it for
Speaker 1: things like building, um, shoring up the interior of their
Speaker 1: little you know, caves and tunnels. Yeah, filling their entire mounds.
Speaker 1: They used their spit for that too. It's magic stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's the reproductives. Oh and you also, um you
Speaker 1: mentioned um that they navigate the ones that can't see
Speaker 1: navigate through scent using pheromones and um, the king and
Speaker 1: queen produce a certain type of pheromone. Uh that kind
Speaker 1: of controls how the colonies population is at any given time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really amazing. Like if they need and beats were
Speaker 1: sort of like this too. If they need more soldiers
Speaker 1: than they uh deposit the pheromone that makes more soldiers.
Speaker 1: They need more workers than they're gonna use the pheromone,
Speaker 1: pheromone that makes more workers. Right. The awesome difference though,
Speaker 1: was with bees, they went through and either laid an
Speaker 1: egg that had been fertilized with sperm to make a male,
Speaker 1: or else they laid an egg that wasn't fertilized to
Speaker 1: make a female, And that's how they made different kinds
Speaker 1: of bees with termites. A termite I actually regress in development,
Speaker 1: go back to the starting point to become a nymph
Speaker 1: again or a larva, I think, and then start over
Speaker 1: and then moll and go from maybe being a worker
Speaker 1: to a soldier or something. It's pretty cool. It's depending.
Speaker 1: It's all carried out by pheromones. So let's talk about soldiers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are obviously named so because they are the defenders
Speaker 1: of the nest and um, their invaders. And when I
Speaker 1: say defenders, they're not gonna be like fight off a
Speaker 1: bat or an art park. They're gonna lose that. But
Speaker 1: they can defend against other termites and ants and things
Speaker 1: like that. And um, what's his name, Aaron Mullins. Mullins
Speaker 1: was right to say that termites are fascinating because there's
Speaker 1: some stuff that wasn't in this article about soldiers. So
Speaker 1: we said that termites are extremely social. There's so social
Speaker 1: that they actually display suicidal behavior that benefits the colony.
Speaker 1: So some workers and some species developed this blue sack
Speaker 1: filled with this blue toxic fluid. And as they age,
Speaker 1: they kind of lose their purpose socially speaking. They can't
Speaker 1: harvest as much stuff like everybody kind of you know.
Speaker 1: The big difference is that when we age, we don't
Speaker 1: come across a an attacker and kill ourselves by um
Speaker 1: blowing the sack up and spraying the attacker with toxic
Speaker 1: So when they don't have their purpose anymore, they could
Speaker 1: like fall on the sword for the sick of the colony.
Speaker 1: And there's another kind that's the soldier that's really good
Speaker 1: at pooping, and they shoot their poop onto enemies, really,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty that's pretty amazing. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: hard pressed to find too many other bugs that can
Speaker 1: accurately aim and shoot their poop and board off other enemies.
Speaker 1: Those are termines, all right, that's pretty fantastic. Um. With
Speaker 1: the fact of the podcast, it ranks um. So aside
Speaker 1: from pooping on other ones, they have the largest mandibles,
Speaker 1: which are the little pincers to battle the ants and
Speaker 1: other termites. And their heads might be a little darker
Speaker 1: than their bodies, but they're not gonna be dark like
Speaker 1: the King and queen. Yeah, just the heads. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we talked about the spittle and the regurgitation. It can
Speaker 1: be uh toxic and sticky like a like a trap
Speaker 1: for another termite. Or just flat out kill them with
Speaker 1: the toxicity. It's like you're coming into my joint. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna either poop on you or vomit on you this
Speaker 1: toxic acid, or explode my blue stack on you. You
Speaker 1: know that's right. So then you have the workers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sadly, the workers are exactly what you think. They are. Blind,
Speaker 1: they're They're probably the ones you see most often if
Speaker 1: you get like a rotten log or something, the little milky,
Speaker 1: creamy looking dudes that just work and that's all they do.
Speaker 1: They eat wood and they poop it back out. Um.
Speaker 1: They do have mandibles, but they're not as big as
Speaker 1: the soldiers. Um. And they dig tunnels, they gather food.
Speaker 1: They can't they babysit the king and queen, and soldiers
Speaker 1: can't even feed themselves. The workers have to feed the
Speaker 1: other termites above them. And what's cool is termites can't
Speaker 1: even eat their own food. They need help from microorganisms
Speaker 1: for that. So cellulose, which is the glucose polymer, very
Speaker 1: tight glucoset polymer that provides structure to all plants. You
Speaker 1: like that, thank you, Yeah, that's you can thank cellular.
Speaker 1: It would be a big lump if it wasn't for cellulos.
Speaker 1: Grass is another one. It's got cellulose um and the
Speaker 1: termites can't eat They can eat the cellulus, but they
Speaker 1: can't break it down, just like we can't. We can
Speaker 1: eat um sucros because we our bodies produced sucras, which
Speaker 1: breaks sucrose down into g ucats, which we use for energy. Sure,
Speaker 1: same thing with the termites. Their bodies don't produce cellulates,
Speaker 1: which breaks down cellulose like we don't either. Like you
Speaker 1: can sit there and eat wood all day long and
Speaker 1: it's just gonna come out the other end exactly that
Speaker 1: that same way I've done it give you splinters on
Speaker 1: the way, right, Yeah, it's not nice. And it's the
Speaker 1: same thing with the termites. But the big difference between
Speaker 1: us and the termites. The termites have this hind gut
Speaker 1: that contains microorganisms that break down the cellulose into glucose
Speaker 1: can use it's right, And that's uh the only thing
Speaker 1: in here I thought was a decent band name, Hindgut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. It's not bad. Uh. So the organisms
Speaker 1: are bacteria and protozoans, and they can't live without one another,
Speaker 1: like the protozoans and bacteria can't live without the termite either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's another cooe. And it's not just these micro by
Speaker 1: micro bacteria that um that they have a symbiotic relationship with.
Speaker 1: Some termites have symbiotic relationship with the fun guess that
Speaker 1: will well, we'll see. Yeah. I mean like they're pretty,
Speaker 1: they're they're harmonious folks. That's a good way to say.
Speaker 1: I like that about them. Uh. Mostly they're categorized by
Speaker 1: where they live. There can be subterranean. If they nest underground, um,
Speaker 1: they are primitive. If they are kind of like the
Speaker 1: ones you find in the rotten log, those are primitive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The um three quarters of all termite species are higher Yeah, termites,
Speaker 1: And it's it's not just their physical evolution, but also
Speaker 1: their behavioral evolution. The higher ones are the mound builders,
Speaker 1: whereas primitive termites are the ones that make a nest
Speaker 1: where they're eating, like in them hollowed out log. The
Speaker 1: big problem with that, and this is why they're not
Speaker 1: as highly evolved, is that when the log runs out,
Speaker 1: the colonies like, oh we're dead. Yeah. I was surprised
Speaker 1: that they didn't like move on to another loger. That's
Speaker 1: why they're primitive in this sense, primitive equals dumb, that's true.
Speaker 1: One thing we didn't mention about the King and Queen
Speaker 1: that I thought was kind of neat too, is that, uh,
Speaker 1: they are monogamous, and um, the queen can store sperm
Speaker 1: in her body enough to keep reproducing without sex, but
Speaker 1: she still throws the old man a bone even though
Speaker 1: she doesn't need to. She's like, I have enough sperm,
Speaker 1: but come on, you know, let's let's go do it right, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's probably what she said. And the King
Speaker 1: is just, you know, imagine very appreciative at that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that's cute about them. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the king. They're they're very social. Um, so let's see
Speaker 1: when we're talking about reproduction, right, yeah, I guess we
Speaker 1: might as well go at it. It was a pretty
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good segway, chuck, thank you. So, um,
Speaker 1: you've got an egg. Let's just look at one individual termite.
Speaker 1: The termite is born an egg, and out of the
Speaker 1: egg emerges a larva, and from the larval stage a
Speaker 1: couple of malts go on, and you enter the nymph stage.
Speaker 1: And I believe it's the nymph stage that's the real
Speaker 1: Like this is where it's like the stem cells stage,
Speaker 1: it can like any termite, there's no determination whatsoever. Any
Speaker 1: termite can become any member of the cast. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: once you're born, that can be a worker or a soldier, right,
Speaker 1: or or even a reproductive so um. In the nymph stage,
Speaker 1: they go through a few more malts. Say, if they're
Speaker 1: going to become a worker, they'll maybe once if they
Speaker 1: mold another time. After that they can become a soldier.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure exactly what process it takes place
Speaker 1: for them to become a reproductive because obviously some sort
Speaker 1: of sexual um emergence has to take place. Maybe and um,
Speaker 1: those are the three casts, and then from the reproductives,
Speaker 1: depending on you know, what takes place, they can become
Speaker 1: secondary or tertiary or the king and the queen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like you said earlier, which is I think one
Speaker 1: of the facts of the show for sure is that
Speaker 1: they can go backward. And they don't like reverse aging
Speaker 1: or anything, but it is a reverse molt, where a
Speaker 1: regressive malt where they can go from soldier back to worker,
Speaker 1: right they go they would go soldier back to nymph,
Speaker 1: I think, and then to work. Yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: go two steps back to go one step to home
Speaker 1: base pretty much. Okay, But so there's like we said,
Speaker 1: every colony has one king and one queen um, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it's not enough, like the colony may get too big.
Speaker 1: And so when that happens, some of the reproductives, the
Speaker 1: secondary of tertiary reproductives, will start to grow wings and
Speaker 1: possibly eyes as well, and that's probably pretty freaky. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's their life that certain way. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're like, whoa, yeah, these things coming out
Speaker 1: of my bes like The fly right, you know what's
Speaker 1: happening to you? The movie The Fly right? Okay, um,
Speaker 1: yeah I knew what's you're saying, just intuitively I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did, one, implies to didn't we? Yes, we did. Okay,
Speaker 1: that one's pretty interesting insect week, right, So as the
Speaker 1: as your friend is starting to grow wings and eyes
Speaker 1: and you're not right, You're like, well, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: stay here. We can't see it though, at least right
Speaker 1: you know you can hear it though? Are you growing wings?
Speaker 1: Growing wings? Can hear it? Sounds like wings? No, don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. But the other difference with your friend,
Speaker 1: is that he or she is suddenly attracted to light,
Speaker 1: which is unusual with termites. Light equals dried out, so
Speaker 1: they're they're normally like away from the light, they're not
Speaker 1: big on the light. Now they are attracted the light,
Speaker 1: which means that they all start to kind of hang
Speaker 1: out around the entrance of the colony, like what's out there.
Speaker 1: And then maybe one warm day, humid day, possibly after
Speaker 1: a rain a day that they're not going to dry out,
Speaker 1: maybe after sundown, they all stumble out of the colony,
Speaker 1: do some terrible flying and try to go find other mates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's called a swarm. And that is called a
Speaker 1: nuptial flight. And uh, for obvious reasons that we will
Speaker 1: see here in a second. And um, that's their only flight.
Speaker 1: And it's not like they just fly around like that's it.
Speaker 1: The only reason they have those wings is to kind
Speaker 1: of get from the nest to another termite. Right, And
Speaker 1: apparently the vast majority of them are going to eaten
Speaker 1: bat food or frog food or whatever. Lots of things
Speaker 1: eat termites. Some do survive. Yeah, And the other interesting
Speaker 1: thing is one colony will swarm at the same time
Speaker 1: another colony way far away, um will swarm and scientists
Speaker 1: think that this is a way that they keep the
Speaker 1: gene pool deep. Yeah, that makes total sense. So like
Speaker 1: you just mate with someone from another colony, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's like a tea party, right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a social like a box feed dating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ice cream social social. So speed dating, you find a
Speaker 1: little mate. A male go out, he sees a female
Speaker 1: a late that he likes. Yeah, I don't think we
Speaker 1: said a late is Latin for wing and um, they land,
Speaker 1: they break their wings off. So now they're called delights
Speaker 1: and they say, hey, you're kind of cute. You want
Speaker 1: to go, like see if we can make a go
Speaker 1: of this, And she says sure, let's go found a
Speaker 1: colony exactly. So they look for a shelter. They dig
Speaker 1: into a hole, um, and then they seal it with
Speaker 1: like to set the mood. They don't want like light
Speaker 1: coming in there. They see it with poop and saliva. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're poop is also they're pooping. Their saliva are really handy,
Speaker 1: super handy. He's just like, let me take care of this,
Speaker 1: like it's windy, let me go poop and seal up
Speaker 1: our door right with mix it with my spit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they's building some wood and soil and uh. Then
Speaker 1: they have a little love nest and they mate and
Speaker 1: the new queen lays her eggs. What's cute is like
Speaker 1: this this uh, and now they're the new king and
Speaker 1: the new queen. This colony that they just founded, the
Speaker 1: first generation. They're going down kind of but not really.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the opposite of Jamestown. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of birth. Yes, Um, so the the the the
Speaker 1: king and the queen will take care of this first
Speaker 1: generation until they have enough workers to take over the duties.
Speaker 1: Then they get lazy and then they just yeah, they
Speaker 1: go back and the queen. The queen doesn't exactly get lazy.
Speaker 1: She's laying thousands of eggs every day. Yeah, the most
Speaker 1: prolific um. That's like the high end for sure. But
Speaker 1: it can happen well. And it takes about two to
Speaker 1: four years for a colony to become fully mature. Um.
Speaker 1: And depending on whether it's a primitive or a higher
Speaker 1: termite species, there can be tens of thousands or millions
Speaker 1: of individuals in this mature colony. And then eventually, uh,
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that they need to swarm again and
Speaker 1: the whole process just takes over again. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: the King and Queen will find out later they live
Speaker 1: um in the deepest, safest part of their nests, whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. Um. And here, I think to me
Speaker 1: is finally the de fact of the podcast what queens
Speaker 1: can live to be twenty years old? If you thought
Speaker 1: that was the fact of the podcast, twenty five years
Speaker 1: old for an insect I saw elsewhere six to seventy
Speaker 1: really wow? Yeah, man, that is crazy. So that's for
Speaker 1: the queen only. Um, but even the workers can live
Speaker 1: two to five years, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the insects world, Yeah, for sure. And that's of course
Speaker 1: barring accident and you know, well bats and frogs, and
Speaker 1: it'll be the same thing with us once we overcome aging.
Speaker 1: You'll still be able to die from an accident as Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I keep saying people eat them. I didn't look
Speaker 1: into it that much, but it's they're definitely on the
Speaker 1: menu in a lot of countries. Um. I think is
Speaker 1: that the United States and Europe and Canada are the
Speaker 1: only countries that don't eat insects in the world. And
Speaker 1: if you're need to survive, I know if you've watched Survivor,
Speaker 1: man uh, a termite nest is like a really great
Speaker 1: thing to happen upon. I'd be like trapped in the woods,
Speaker 1: a lot of protein. Yeah, and if you're an art
Speaker 1: Parker an ant eater, same deal exactly. So you've got
Speaker 1: your colony and they need a place to live. They
Speaker 1: don't just wander around. They're not Bedouins, right. They've built
Speaker 1: a nest, but they haven't really built there home yet,
Speaker 1: their shelter. They've got the house, but they haven't made
Speaker 1: it a home kind of, but they haven't expanded it
Speaker 1: into a city. They've established a house, it's down the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. Now they need to build the infrastructure
Speaker 1: and a society basically exactly. And once they raised that
Speaker 1: first generation of workers, then it starts to take over
Speaker 1: and the colony grows exponentially from there. Yeah. Um, their
Speaker 1: nests are going to be called They all build nests
Speaker 1: no matter what species. They're called termitaries or termitaria. And
Speaker 1: even though they all build nests, they can be quite
Speaker 1: different depending on what the species is and where you
Speaker 1: find them. Like we said, the primitives are going to
Speaker 1: be living in the wood that they're consuming until what's gone,
Speaker 1: and then they die and they are categorized according to
Speaker 1: the wood that they like to eat, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Yeah, like damp, dry, or rotten. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: probably love that stuff, the rotten stuff. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: you talked earlier about the fun guy that they share
Speaker 1: their home with in bacteria, which is pretty cool. That's
Speaker 1: very much symbiosis as well. Well, actually it's not. It's
Speaker 1: one guy can't live without the termites. There is a Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a specific type of termite, macro terminite
Speaker 1: neatne macro term You sounding like an islander. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got it, though, I got it. So um. They actually
Speaker 1: grow mushrooms like they garden. That was one of the
Speaker 1: facts of the podcast too, isn't that neat? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: grow these specific types of mushrooms that eventually grow out
Speaker 1: of the termite mound. The termites grow these, and the
Speaker 1: reason the termites grow them is because this fungus u
Speaker 1: helps to break down the cellulosic material that the mound
Speaker 1: is built against. So they're they're growing these mushrooms to
Speaker 1: help them break this stuff down so they can in
Speaker 1: turn eat it more efficiently. Yeah, they're actually gardening. It's
Speaker 1: really amazing. Yeah, what's his name, Aaron Mullins. He was right,
Speaker 1: they are fascinating. So we'll get to the mounds in
Speaker 1: a second, but we'll cover subterranean now. They are the
Speaker 1: ones underground obviously, and it's uh, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: when you've looked at like the little ant farms that
Speaker 1: you buy all the little series of tubes and caves
Speaker 1: and tunnels. Um, that's what they're building down there. Some
Speaker 1: they have galleries for storage and for classroom education and
Speaker 1: raising the young, and then they have they obviously lived
Speaker 1: down there as well, and then they connect it all together.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they connect it to their food source. Like they'll
Speaker 1: build a next near a tree route that connects right
Speaker 1: to it and they can just tap right into it.
Speaker 1: And then I guess does that kill the tree eventually? Well,
Speaker 1: it just disintegrates the tree. It's not there any longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's already dead tree. They eat rotting wood or
Speaker 1: dead wood. I don't think they eat live wood. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is just like an old root, I guess. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And the the they they'll build their um their nests
Speaker 1: such that if it's cold out, yeah, they'll it'll be
Speaker 1: deep enough that they can all migrate down to a
Speaker 1: warmer spot in the earth. There's like different areas within
Speaker 1: the colony that they'll take root, right, and if it's
Speaker 1: if it's hot out or something, they'll, um, they'll maybe
Speaker 1: go to like part of the colony that's under the
Speaker 1: shade of a tree or something like that. I mean
Speaker 1: they're pretty complex. Yeah, And if they are building their
Speaker 1: nest underground and they come upon a big slab of
Speaker 1: rock or something, they build little what's called shelter tubes
Speaker 1: about the size of a pencil in diameter, and they
Speaker 1: they're basically just a little alternate highway. It's like detours.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it's like, um, it's an extension of the
Speaker 1: nest that protects the termites from exposure to sunlight or
Speaker 1: the air or anything like that. Yeah, But a lot
Speaker 1: of times just to get around something too right, but
Speaker 1: rather than having to like crawl up over the rock
Speaker 1: and be exposed, they build this this basically like a tunnel.
Speaker 1: Then it's like, um, it's like the opposite of a tunnel.
Speaker 1: It's it's exposed, it's above ground. So like let's say
Speaker 1: you have a subterranean colony chuck, And here's the ground,
Speaker 1: and an inch above the ground is your house. But
Speaker 1: between the ground and your house is cement, the slab
Speaker 1: that your house is built on. They may build a
Speaker 1: um what's it called a shelter tube from the ground,
Speaker 1: from their nest to your house, and it's just like
Speaker 1: an extension of their their colony, of their subterranean nest.
Speaker 1: So those are the subs. They're also mounds. I encourage
Speaker 1: you to google giant might mound and see some of
Speaker 1: these things that are like tall. Some of them are
Speaker 1: uncannily like houses. They look like human houses. Yeah, really neat, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you'll find these in Africa. You're not gonna find these
Speaker 1: in Georgia or anything like that, not this tall. But um,
Speaker 1: they are domed, towered structures, and they are made up
Speaker 1: of soil and excrement and poop and saliva and all
Speaker 1: the moisture that glue like and moisture they can secrete,
Speaker 1: I guess. And uh. Some of them are little nests
Speaker 1: like on the side of stumps or trees, but some
Speaker 1: of them are just free standing out in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Yeah, and like freestanding and structurally sound like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll survive longer than the termites. Weil. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: survive brush fires. Seen pictures of brush fires that just
Speaker 1: went past the termite mound. Um floods flood l kill
Speaker 1: the termite colony, but the mound itself will remain intact.
Speaker 1: And they also have a built in heating and cooling
Speaker 1: system eventally system where they build chimneys into the mounds
Speaker 1: and there's ventilation chefts coming in the other way and
Speaker 1: it forces heat out and cool air in. And there's
Speaker 1: actually a UM mixed use development in uh Harrara, Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: called East Skate Center and it has no central h
Speaker 1: v A C. It uses termite inspired chimney ducks for
Speaker 1: heating and cooling of this place. It's pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: they just got their idea from like how they do
Speaker 1: their work. Yeah, it's like biomimicry. Oh yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: about that before. Yeah, I don't think we ever did
Speaker 1: an episode on it. Now added to the list, my friend. Um.
Speaker 1: So another way that termites. You know, they're gonna get
Speaker 1: eaten a lot, but that is another way that they
Speaker 1: benefit um the ecosystem. If you're part of the food
Speaker 1: chain and other animals are gonna eat you and poop
Speaker 1: you out. Then you're doing your job right sadly, But
Speaker 1: termites also eat other animals pop. Yeah, they eat herban
Speaker 1: wars poop because there's frequently cellulosic material left over, and
Speaker 1: the termites eat that. If they're cellulose, they're gonna eat it.
Speaker 1: They don't care if it's poop. Yeah, And they play
Speaker 1: a really vital role to the um to their ecosystems.
Speaker 1: In some places, termites are the only things breaking down
Speaker 1: cellulosic material like a fallen tree, um or animal poop
Speaker 1: that would build up otherwise if the termites didn't eat it. Um.
Speaker 1: So they they have a really bad they get a
Speaker 1: bad rap among humans. But apparently the species are beneficial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And I guess this is the point where
Speaker 1: we should get into the sad part, which is if
Speaker 1: you want to prevent termites from coming to where you
Speaker 1: live or get rid of them if they are there.
Speaker 1: But um, right after this message break. If you have
Speaker 1: a woodhouse, the termite doesn't know that it's not just
Speaker 1: a fallen log, it's dead wood as far as they're
Speaker 1: in turn, and it it's on the menu, especially if
Speaker 1: that would is making direct contact with the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always a good thing not to have a good
Speaker 1: starting point for a termite though. Um So around the
Speaker 1: world where termites are really really bad, you might even
Speaker 1: see a house with one stilts with like metal posts
Speaker 1: so the termites can't get up in there. Um it's
Speaker 1: not nearly like that around here, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: Africa and Australia have like some serious serious problems with termites.
Speaker 1: In Australia, yeah, and I mean those are the places
Speaker 1: where you will see like a stilt with metal around
Speaker 1: it because the termites, Which makes sense because if there's
Speaker 1: enough termites, there's not a lot you can do, so
Speaker 1: you just take preventative measures and live with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like before you build your house. Um, these days they
Speaker 1: will treat the ground before they even break ground. But
Speaker 1: that stuff is pretty toxic and it only lasts about
Speaker 1: five years. Um, if you're not into that, you can
Speaker 1: say no, thank you for the toxic treatment. I would
Speaker 1: just like to do this every few years. It's still
Speaker 1: probably pretty toxic though. Like the way they like, I
Speaker 1: have this stuff. Um, I have these little uh they're
Speaker 1: not traps, they're built into the ground all around my
Speaker 1: house and the termite guy. The only reason to know
Speaker 1: he's been there is because he leaves a little note
Speaker 1: on my door instead of checked your traps. But they're
Speaker 1: not traps. It's probably just leaching nasty stuff into my soils.
Speaker 1: What it's doing probably yeah, which is no good, but
Speaker 1: it works. Yeah, you don't have termites, that's true. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like we said, you don't want your wood coming
Speaker 1: into direct contact with the soil. That's gonna be a
Speaker 1: basically an open invite for termites to come in there. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't want, but I mean, termite prevention can be
Speaker 1: as simple as that. Yeah. If you put like a
Speaker 1: moisture barrier in your basement, yeah, just keep it dry.
Speaker 1: It's gonna keep your basement dry and that will kill
Speaker 1: termites just in and of itself. And then if you
Speaker 1: don't have any dirt up against any wood part of
Speaker 1: your house. Every once in a while you just walk
Speaker 1: around your house and make sure there's no shelter tubes
Speaker 1: crawling up to your the wood on your house, you
Speaker 1: should be fine. Yeah, And before you buy your house,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a termite inspection. That's like one of
Speaker 1: the big things that you should do if you live
Speaker 1: in an area proneo termites, that is. But let's say
Speaker 1: let's say you do suspect that there's been a termite infestation.
Speaker 1: What are some of the signs? Uh, Well, seeing termites
Speaker 1: in your house, that's the one that means you're screwed
Speaker 1: because they're already through the wood. Especially if you see
Speaker 1: a swarm. Oh, you're super screwed because that means there's
Speaker 1: so many already in your house that they have to
Speaker 1: go form another colony elsewhere in your house. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: when it's time to call a termite professional. That's right.
Speaker 1: Um they might look like ants, So if you think
Speaker 1: you have an ant problem, you want to like look
Speaker 1: extra close in um flying ants. Yeah, at their waste.
Speaker 1: Um Ants have a narrower waste than termites do. Um
Speaker 1: Ants front wings are a lot long or than the
Speaker 1: back wings, whereas termites wings are the same length. So
Speaker 1: that's another good way to um tell. And they fold
Speaker 1: over one another to make like a straight line. That's
Speaker 1: a big giveaway. Uh. And then the antenna and an
Speaker 1: ant's antenna's bent and the termites is straight and looks
Speaker 1: like a little round pearls. Yeah, so uh yeah, look closely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: catch one, hold it gently, look closely and you really
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you could do that. Um, you might. There
Speaker 1: might also be other signs, less obvious signs, UM, Like
Speaker 1: you might find little tiny wings, like flying ant wings
Speaker 1: around your windows in your lights. That's a sign that
Speaker 1: termites have been there and have already sworn because they
Speaker 1: went from allites to d allites. Um, do you have decayed?
Speaker 1: Would if you tap your wood with a hammer, does
Speaker 1: the hammer go right through it? If so, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good sign you have termine. Don't like that infomercial? Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty much do in every episode. No, you don't. But
Speaker 1: it can also get confused with like water damage and things. Um.
Speaker 1: The way you can tell the difference is termite damage
Speaker 1: follows the grain of the wood and it's also lined
Speaker 1: um with wood and soil, and that's obviously not the
Speaker 1: case with water damage. Um. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: just look for the shelter tubes. That's a pretty giveaway.
Speaker 1: To pick up a cinder block and do you see
Speaker 1: tubes and termites. Yeah. What's great though, is if you
Speaker 1: see this, you don't need to panic. Like it takes many, many,
Speaker 1: many years for termites to really do significant damage to
Speaker 1: your house. Yeah, but it's on the flip side though.
Speaker 1: They it's often invisible until it's too late, you know,
Speaker 1: like you gotta get if you if you see a
Speaker 1: couple of swarms in your house, then yeah, you need
Speaker 1: to handle that immediately. You should handle it immediately no
Speaker 1: matter what. But if you spotted a shelter tube for
Speaker 1: the first time, and you just also looked last week,
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily in any danger in The point is is,
Speaker 1: since it takes a while, you want to take a
Speaker 1: while in finding the right exterminator because they're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna make friends with this person because they have some
Speaker 1: serious work to do. Yeah, and you need an exterminator.
Speaker 1: This isn't the kind of problem you can get rid
Speaker 1: of on your own. It's not for civilians to tackle.
Speaker 1: And we're not shills for exterminators either, We're really saying this.
Speaker 1: So you don't want to tackle it on your own. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to hire your exterminator. The first thing they're
Speaker 1: gonna do is obviously verify that is infect termites and
Speaker 1: not water damage or something. They're gonna hit the wood
Speaker 1: in your house with the hammer. Yeah, pretty much. They
Speaker 1: have all kinds of things that like heat sensors and
Speaker 1: little tiny infrared cameras they'll stick into your walls, and
Speaker 1: um stethoscopes, like I can hear them, do they They
Speaker 1: have sound sensors. It's just like a high texts stethoscope.
Speaker 1: One of the things they can do is bates use baits,
Speaker 1: which is basically unfortunately wood soaked and pesticide. It's poisoned
Speaker 1: food and they say, hey, come in here and eat this,
Speaker 1: and they eat it and then they take it back
Speaker 1: to their colony and kill everybody. It's exactly like snow white. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful though, Like I've grown, I had grown to
Speaker 1: love termites by the end of this, and then I
Speaker 1: started reading about how they kill him. I'm like, that's awful.
Speaker 1: Can't you just relocate them? I feel it very much
Speaker 1: the same way. Yeah, you can't know, No, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't relocate him. You have to kill them, or
Speaker 1: you could move just get leave them the house kind
Speaker 1: of why not. Repellents is another thing they can use,
Speaker 1: my friend, uh, and that's just like any kind of
Speaker 1: insect repellent that keeps them from like if you see
Speaker 1: a swarm near your house, you're gonna use a repellent.
Speaker 1: That means they're not at the house yet and you
Speaker 1: can keep them away. Is that what you're guys doing
Speaker 1: with a little trap thing or whatever. Uh, he's probably
Speaker 1: using your repellent. Yeah, it's some sort of Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's killing like an ultrasonic way that just
Speaker 1: shatters their head, you know what it is. It's so weird,
Speaker 1: these little round you just when you walk by, it
Speaker 1: looks like a little round disk, green disk. And then
Speaker 1: I've seen him pull it up though, and it goes like,
Speaker 1: you know, six inches into the ground. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably repellent. I think it's got to be. And the
Speaker 1: cool thing about repellents too, is, um, the ones that
Speaker 1: are already inside are trapped inside, and they're cut off
Speaker 1: from the rest of the Uh, they're safe colony, which
Speaker 1: means that they probably die of dehydration pretty soon. So
Speaker 1: that's cool and very sad. All right. Well, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, they called me. The final thing that
Speaker 1: they can do is just kill them with a termatic side,
Speaker 1: and that means pumping sometimes hundreds of gallons of poison
Speaker 1: into their nests and killing them into your house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that's why you just move and
Speaker 1: leave him the house. You tell the bank like, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm not paying on this anymore. Go hit the termites
Speaker 1: up for your monthly payment. If you're brave, you got
Speaker 1: anything else? No, yeah, it did kind of Who are
Speaker 1: hanging on by our fingernails there? I wish we had
Speaker 1: one more, like, great, fact, let's just make one up
Speaker 1: and then at the end they turn into carrot top. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Good going back to the show, I've
Speaker 1: got one. Oh, we didn't cover the foremotion, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Okay, I didn't even highlight that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the termite poop is called frass f R A S
Speaker 1: S and frass is rich in magnesium, so when they
Speaker 1: poop they enrich the soil. They're just pretty much perfect
Speaker 1: in every way except for when they're eating your house.
Speaker 1: That's a great way to end it. I know your
Speaker 1: carrot top one was the best way to end it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to learn more about termites, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go type that word into the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and says I said search part.
Speaker 1: Its time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this bird killer. Uh.
Speaker 1: In our show on myth Busting Common Misconceptions, we I
Speaker 1: told the story about killing a bird, and Josh told
Speaker 1: the story about Youmi microwaving and bird, but you say
Speaker 1: not killing right. It eventually died. She didn't kill it
Speaker 1: in a microwave. It just died later from microwave internal complications.
Speaker 1: Just died of being overtreated. Okay, So we got a
Speaker 1: letter from Matt about that. Um Hi, guys, you broke
Speaker 1: my heart this morning. I was listening to your myth
Speaker 1: busting podcast on the drive in. I don't like this one.
Speaker 1: I read this one. I don't like it. Should I
Speaker 1: not read it? Yeah, you can't go. It's so you
Speaker 1: can excuse yourself if you want to leave. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: sit through it. You started talking about the mama bird
Speaker 1: baby bird myth, and it brought tears to my eyes.
Speaker 1: You see, when I was in the fourth grade, my
Speaker 1: friend John and I were playing in the woods and
Speaker 1: the beautiful South Hills of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We encountered a
Speaker 1: baby bird, and I, being an animal lover, picked it
Speaker 1: up because it was so cute. As soon as I did,
Speaker 1: I remember that I had just doomed it to a
Speaker 1: slow death of lonely starvation because his mother would never
Speaker 1: care for it again. For some reason, even though I
Speaker 1: was and am an animal person, neither John nor I
Speaker 1: thought of raising it ourselves. Instead, we thought we would
Speaker 1: spare it a horrible slow death by snatching it with
Speaker 1: the cinder block, which we did just so you know, guys,
Speaker 1: I haven't killed an animal since and I'm not a
Speaker 1: serial killer currently. Until this morning, I actually thought that
Speaker 1: we did the right thing. So this dude from the
Speaker 1: fourth grade, until last week, I thought that he had
Speaker 1: like spared this bird. Yep. Uh. Now I can't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about the mama bird watching from high in a
Speaker 1: tree as we smashed her baby with the cinder block.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Also, I have an anti joke.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of anti jokes, by the way,
Speaker 1: apparently there's some like established anti jokes. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: rabbits in the bathtub. I didn't see that one. Two
Speaker 1: rabbits in the bathtub, and one and said, hey, pass
Speaker 1: me the soap, and the other one said, what do
Speaker 1: I look like a typewriter? So that one didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I like this one. Though a man walks into a bar,
Speaker 1: he's an alcoholic and it's destroying his family. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that one. I love it. Uh. In all
Speaker 1: seriousness though, guys, thanks with the best podcast around and
Speaker 1: that is from Matt. Thanks Matt. Appreciate that, sorry bubble
Speaker 1: of my friend. Actually I don't appreciate that one at all.
Speaker 1: If you want to send something that traumatizes Chucker me,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, you
Speaker 1: can hang out with us at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. Hey.
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