Humans have used drumming to relay messages across large distances for millennia – but they aren't alone in this. It seems some species of termite do the same, by bashing their heads on the ground to signal danger.
The African termite (Macrotermes natalensis) builds giant mounds in the savannah on top of vast networks of tunnels
To find out how they do this, Felix Hager and Wolfgang Kirchner of the University of Bochum in Germany pointed high-speed cameras at the central chamber of a termite mound before opening it. The soldier termites responded by bashing their heads into the ground around 11 times per second, causing it to vibrate.
Good vibrations
Next, they measured how far the vibrations from one termite travelled, and found that after 40 centimetres the ground no longer moved enough for other termites to pick up the signal. Yet termites that were much further away responded to the signal – workers, for instance, returned to the nest.
It turns out that when soldier termites pick up a drumming alarm, they respond by drumming their heads themselves. The wave of vibration travelled 1.3 metres per second.
The termites only respond to a specific frequency of vibrations. When the pair put individual termites into petri dishes and made them vibrate at different frequencies, they found the termites only stopped what they were doing and appeared to pay attention when the vibration patterns recorded in the wild were recreated.
Journal reference: Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.091512
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
