Originally published at: What happens when termites take to the air | Boing Boing
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Once a pair of flying termites have hooked up, they lose their wings, dig underground, mate and lay thousands of eggs.
That’s when the real fun starts, for the home owner…
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This mournful picture of one of the last ones picked, looking for a mate, was taken by Brodie Hopkins of https://collectthe.world/
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Looks like there’s a need for an app: Termite Tonight, or something.
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Am I the only one who had “Flight of the Valkyries” playing in their head as the termites took flight?
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Thanks to the Ologies podcast i learned yesterday that termites are related to cockroaches, they have just evolved from eating poop to eating wood. and i’m horrified by both all over again.
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Do ants do this too? I remember a group of winged thingies crawling up the screen of our 1st floor porch from the wooden section but they looked like ants to me.
If you squish their bodies up and swap out the big eyes for small, with the double wings they look a lot like dragon flies, Shame they lose the beautiful wings.
My version of a dragon fly, reality may differ:
Yes, they also have winged males and females that fly out to mate, usually in synchronized swarms. In ants though the males are smaller drones that die shortly after mating, and the new queens start the colonies on their own.
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When it begins to rain in California,
…or when the neighbor decides to demolish part of their home without treating the wood first. I’m still a little freaked out by the swarm that invaded my apartment last spring. Lucky the construction I live in is styrofoam with a concrete shell.
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