Johnny Newman, age 10, of Quilcene, Wash

 Are white ants a true ant?

The so called white ants are in no way related to the true ants nor are all of them white  They are termites and throughout the world some 2,000 different kinds of them have already bean named and classified  All belong in the insect order Isoptera ‑ a scientific name meaning equal wings  In the teeming termite colony there is always a group of teenagers, each wearing two pairs of long and narrow wings of crisp gauze 

Certain termites of the tropics build massive mansions seven feet tall  The masonry, made from mud mixed with termite saliva, is hard as concrete  Yet the anteating aardvard of Africa rips it apart with his mighty claws and uses his long sticky tongue to devour thousands of the little termites at a single meal 

North America is home to more than 50 different termites  We regard them as pests, for they phew up railroad ties, beams and building supports  It is estimated that they do 50 million dollars worth of damage in the United States alone every year  But this destruction is not part of their role in the scheme of nature  In the wild; they chew up old logs and fallen trees, helping Mother Nature to break up her used materials and build them back into useful soil 

Strange to say, a termite cannot eat and digest wood by itself  It must have help from certain tiny protozoa which dwell in its tiny intestines, When these protozoa are destroyed, the termite perishes 

The colony of teeming termites is a strict class or caste society  There are three or more different castes, each with its own duties  The upper crust includes their majesties the king and queen and a host of royal princes and princesses 

The middle class is made up of pasty white workers, about a quarter inch long  The lower class includes the soldiers which look somewhat like workers with huge threatening jaws  Their job is to defend the nest 

The queen mother is certainly the center of the society, She may lay thousands of eggs a day and her hugs abdomen may be two or three inches long  She looks like a miniature roll of pasty white inner tubes with a black head and two pairs of gauzy wings bitten off at shoulder level  She is too fat to do anything but lay eggs and a host of workers is always in attendance to groom her and take care of her every need: The king is a slim fellow, almost half an inch long, neatly dressed in black and white with  a slick yellow abdomen,

The pile of little white eggs hatches into a swarm of tiny copies of the adult termites, All of the babies look alike, and it will take them two whole years to grow into adults  In the process they go through six stages of growth and some become soldiers, some workers  Some will become princes and princesses, each fitted with two pairs of wings, These will leave the nest in pairs to start their own nests  Then each royal couple will bite off their wings and the queen will soon be laying 2000 to 5,000 eggs a day,