Termites: The Inner Sanctum

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Termites,

from the outside,

and from the inside.

More than 2,000 species of them.

Multi-tasking,

building,

harvesting,

transforming,

reproducing,

trapped.

You'll see their enemies,

and their end,

and you will penetrate

to their secret center.

In the east African savanna,

termite hills are nothing special,

unless you've never seen inside before,

seen their sunless secret lives,

and the scale of their citadels.

Eyeless, teeming insects.

And yet, it seems, to know them,

is to love them,

especially when you

understand the roles they play

in the functioning of our planet.

Studying termites can be frustrating.

They're not the most

cooperative of beasts.

They do their own thing.

But these two veteran scientists

are about to share a profound insight,

a glimpse into the

termite's inner sanctum,

a secret that has resisted

all investigation.

A comfortable retirement

should have rewarded

biologists Joanna Darlington

and Reinhard Leuthold,

but when you're as dedicated

to termites as they are,

you can't retire while

there's so much to learn.

Cannot never be absolutely sure.

Yes, you can be absolutely

sure it's a building,

but you can't be absolutely

sure that they're dead.

And if they're dead...

They disagree on details,

but they know these ancient insects

are key players in

habitats across the world.

In this ecosystem,

they are the main agents

for the breakdown of dead vegetation.

The soil is baked by the sun,

and things like bacteria and fungi

can't live near the surface at all.

Termites help this arid land bear fruit,

but often, there's no

visible sign of them.

It's hard to study them,

because they don't like being exposed,

so a lot of my work is reconstructive.

Termite research is like archaeology,

excavating buried cities,

drawing conclusions from the

evidence of abandoned sites.

Open up a termite mound,

and the termites disappear

deep underground as though

they'd never been there,

but there's one group of termites

that has nowhere to go,

because they can't move,

and the challenge is to observe them

without destroying their home,

the inner sanctum,

the queen's chamber.

So, this is the queen's home.

The queen,

huge, super productive,

mother of every individual

in a city numbering 1,000,000,

together forming a

single super-organism.

Immediately, her attendants scurry

to wall up the opening Joanna has made.

The sudden changes in

temperature, humidity,

and brightness, have

sent them into a panic,

but it's an orderly one.

Her workers have plenty of water ready

to produce instant cement,

even in this dry place.

Soldiers' powerful jaws

guard the shrinking gap,

ready to repel intruders.

For a few seconds, the researchers

have glimpsed the heart of

a termite super-organism,

or rather, it's womb,

the very source of a colony's life.

In many countries, termites are feared,

hated, and hunted down.

They can be a few centimeters away

and you'd never know,

unless you call in the professionals.

Got a little bit more activity here.

We got some drywood termite,

some pellets right there.

To crawl under the house

and squeeze into impossible corners.

There they are.

We have to treat this beam here.

It's the same indoors.

Cut that beam open,

and you're in for a shock.

Wonder if we could get the whole beam.

To these critters,

your house isn't a home,

it's and all-you-can-eat diner.

They'll take everything they can get.

What are termites?

Some folks call them white ants.

They couldn't be more wrong.

Ants have been around

as long as termites,

and like termites,

they're social insects,

but unlike termites,

many are carnivores.

Other insects are

frequently on the menu.

Ants evolved from wasps.

Termites, on the other hand,

are descended from cockroaches,

and they're strictly vegetarian.

In fact, termites will eat everything

from lichen to dead wood.

That's one of the

secrets of their success.

They're a lot more than just pests.

Let's take a trip via

computer tomography

through the gut of a drywood termite.

It's built to process

cellulose and lignin,

the tough materials

surrounding plant cells.

The termite bites off

small fragments of wood,

first, these are softened,

then they're shredded,

and all that happens

in just one millimeter.

Let's go back inside.

The fibers are squeezed

on through the tract,

until they reach a special gut,

a kind of a paunch,

containing single-celled organisms,

called flagellates,

that break down cellulose.

Flagellates make up a third

of a termite's body weight.

Without these flagellates,

termites would starve.

They extract enormous amounts

of energy from the cellulose,

and pass it on to the termite,

leaving just a few tiny crumbs of feces

that you may never even notice.

A family like this can

live happily in a house

for years without any idea that

termites are on the attack,

Though the microscopic signs are there,

and the sounds.

Here in Kenya, termites

are part of the landscape.

People respect their monumental mounds.

Farmers protect them,

even when they're right in

the middle of their fields.

A tractor occasionally

runs over a termite tunnel.

The tunnels reach well beyond

the visible part of the nest.

This is a young adult,

almost ready to leave the colony

and found a new one.

Termites try to stay underground,

but to find a mate and a suitable site

for a new colony,

they have to emerge into the open air,

usually at night.

It's the riskiest moment of their lives.

Farmers like the highly productive

moist soil around the mounds.

Whatever helps them grow

food here is welcome.

8,500 kilometers away,

on the island of Borneo,

the climate looks made for termites.

The rain forest is

constantly humid, warm,

and well-shaded.

This is probably the sort of habitat

where termites originated.

These species have it made.

No need to stay underground

out of the heat,

or dig deep for water.

For their nests,

they have hollow tree trunks.

Unlike their drywood

termite cousins in America,

these termites don't eat

the timber they live in,

so they have to launch

food-gathering forays

every ten days.

Scouts have identified a harvesting site

and mapped out an ideal route

through the congested landscape.

A gland on the scout's abdomen

lays a pheromone track

for the others to follow.

Their dark chitin shell allows them

some exposure to sunlight.

This is where the harvesters go to work,

a patch of lichen clinging to a tree,

up to 100 meters from the nest.

That's 15 kilometers on a human scale.

These harvesters,

young worker termites with

their small, sharp jaws,

won't eat anything out here.

They'll scratch, graze,

and gather all they can

at a frantic pace,

because the entire army

is operating to a schedule.

In less than 30 minutes,

this trunk is scraped clean.

Time to hand over to the transporters,

a division of labor established

a hundred million years ago.

This one will wait until

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