Now Thats Tall!

TRUE OR FALSE
Humans are the only animals to exploit the earth for our own personal gain?

TRUE OR FALSE
Humans are the only animals that can use reason to weigh the consequences of actions and change?

Termites are social insects, related to cockroaches. They are well-known for building extraordinary cathedral-like mounds with clever ventilation systems, and notorious for eating wooden houses - in the US they cause more damage to homes than storms and fires combined. Some termites eat soil, and others eat dead wood in tropical forests, aiding the decomposition process. Some termites give off methane when digesting food, by fermentation in the gut, in a similar way to cattle. Methane is another of the greenhouse gases.

Termite mounds can be as high as 30 feet, but the average one is seven or eight. Some termite mounds can contain as much as 60 tons of material, which ranges from soil to the waste of the plant matter that they devour. Elaborate termite mounds that reach great heights are the largest structures constructed on the planet by a species other than man. Termites could produce as much as 150 million tons of methane a year. The amount of methane in the atmosphere was - and still is - increasing faster than other greenhouse gases, by 1 per cent a year since 1978.