John Batich, age 11, of Garwood, N.J., for his question:
Do termites really eat wood?
Every year the termites of North America cause an estimated $50 million worth of damage to our property. They devour lumber and weaken the wooden posts and rafters of our buildings. They chew out numerous tunnels and weaken wooden foundations. Some termites also attack living plants and cause havoc among the sugar canes and orange trees.
Termites live secretive lives in dark underground nests. There are swarming hundreds of the tiny insects in each nest, and day and night their armies of workers tunnel through wood and lumber. The blind, pasty white workers cannot abide the light, so their work is done in darkness, way out of sight. The devouring armies conduct sneak attacks and damage often is done before we know it. The wooden foundations, posts or rafters of a building may be weakened beyond repair by termite tunnels before any of the signs of destruction begin to show.
The soft bodied worker termites look like helpless little creatures, but they have strong mouth parts built for chewing; and they chew wood, wood and more wood. Wood is made mostly of cellulose, a tough substance that is just about indigestible, even to termites. In fact, termites could not digest the wood they devour if they did not have some very special help.
The help they get comes from creatures much smaller than themselves. Each worker termite has colonies of certain protozoa in its digestive tract. These special one celled animals process the wood devoured by the termite and change it into food chemicals that the insect can digest. The wood devouring termite perishes from hunger when these protozoa are removed from its intestines.
The termite nest also supports an army of fighters. These soldier termites have mighty jaws for attacking the enemies of the community, but their jaws are useless for chewing wood. Their intestines contain wood digesting protozoa, but the wood they eat must first be chewed up by the busy little workers. The king and queen of the termite nest have no wood digesting protozoa. The royal family depends upon food that has been chewed and digested by the workers.
Termites belong to the Isopteran order of insects. Their name means equal wings, but the workers and soldiers have no wings at all. Certain young princes and princesses of the royal family have two long pairs of equal size wings. The wings of the king and the huge queen are bitten off and look like four stubby little fans upon their shoulders. Members of the royal family are not blind, and their bodies are encased in tough segmented coats.