Social insects like ants and
bees are known to communicate
with each other with chemical, tactile and
visual signaling. Now here is a case of
termites hitting their head against the wooden walls of
their colony to drum up support in
response to invasion by other creatures.
A paper recently published
in Nature shows that these African
termites can indeed respond to low
frequency vibrations that emanate from the head
hitting. But these vibrations do not
travel more than 40 centimeters or so. So the others who detect
these vibrations may pass on the message by repeating the drumming
with their own heads, say the scientists.
Reminds one of the talking
drums that are depicted in Phantom
comics, doesn't it?
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