Animal · Namibia, South Africa, Kenya
Termite
Isoptera — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
Termites look like tiny pale ants, but they are not ants at all: their closest living relatives are the cockroaches. Some kinds build towers of hard earth that are taller than a grown-up.
Picture credit: Sanjay Acharya (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the termite live?
Home: warm forests, savannahs and grassland.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Australia, Brazil, India, the United States.
The short profile
Fully grown: 4–15 mm (workers). It weighs about 0 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A termite colony works like one big household. Deep inside lies the queen, who can lay tens of thousands of eggs in a single day, while pale workers chew up dead wood, grass and leaves. Many African species farm a fungus underground: they feed it a mash of chewed plants, and the fungus turns the tough parts into food they can digest. The mound above is not the home but the chimney, because the nest sits below it and the tower of baked earth swaps stale air for fresh air. For a long time people thought the warm air simply streamed up and out all day long. Newer measurements show a slower back-and-forth instead, driven by the sun heating one side and the night cooling everything down again. Either way, the nest stays evenly warm without a single machine.
Find it on the globe
Termite is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is a termite?
Most workers are only 4 to 15 mm long, about the size of a grain of rice. The queen is the giant: in some African species her soft body grows longer than your hand.
Where do termites live?
On every continent except Antarctica, and mostly where it is warm. Africa alone has around a thousand species, while all of Europe has only about ten.
Are termites the same as ants?
No. Ants belong with bees and wasps, while termites are cockroaches that took up a very special way of life. You can tell them apart by the soft pale body, the broad waist and the straight, beaded feelers.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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