In the north-east of Brazil, a "city" was found, the size of which is stunning. It spreads over 230,000 square kilometers. We inhabit. In it live creatures about a centimeter in size - termites of the species Syntermes dirus. The city is 4 thousand years old. Which is also impressive.
The largest settlement on our planet was discovered by an expedition in which biologists from Great Britain, Brazil and the USA participated. They were led by Stephen Martin of the University of Salford (School of Environment and Life Sciences, The University of Salford, Manchester, UK). Scientists reported their discovery in the journal Current Biology.
Having estimated the size of the “city”, biologists have estimated the number of “houses” in it - conical hills with an average height of 2.5 meters and a diameter of about 9 meters.
The city consists of such hill houses.
Termites poured cones from the soil, which they dug, making underground tunnels. They actually live in the tunnels. The hills are a kind of waste of the creative activity of the Metrostroevites.
City communications scheme.
The hills are about 200 million. Staggered about 20 meters apart. Their cluster is visible even from space.
Promotional video:
This is how the city of termites looks like in space images.
It is calculated: there is as much soil in the hills as it would be enough to fill 4 thousand pyramids of Cheops. It is about 10 cubic kilometers.
The tunnel that connects the houses. Termites live in such - rather spacious - tunnels.
Scientists have proposed to consider the city of termites a wonder of the world. And they indicated that it is larger than the island on which Great Britain is located - its area is 209331 square kilometers.
A kind of photo report - its scientists published it in a scientific journal. On the left is a map of the area they visited, part of the city that they managed to survey is marked in orange, the outline on the right is Great Britain.
SOMETHING MORE GREAT
Beavers built a dam visible from space
The longest beaver dam in the world was discovered in one of the reserves located in northern Canada (Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta, Canada). Its length is 850 meters. The structure is visible from space. He was spotted in the satellite image.
As the researchers found, the dam was built by several families of local beavers, united in a team. Thousands of trees have been felled, thousands of tons of clay and branches have been hauled.
Record size Canadian beaver dam.
This is how one of the sections of the dam looks up close.
Beavers live in huts, the entrances to which are located under water. To hide them, the animals block quiet forest rivers and streams with dams. Raise the water level.
Typically, beaver dams reach a length of 20-30 meters. But the Canadian variety of builders is working on a grand scale. The previous record was set by families who built a 700-meter dam on the Jefferson River in Montana. The current drummers blocked the achievement of their colleagues by 150 meters. They lacked some 200 meters to catch up with the dam of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP (1074 meters). However, people began to build the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP in 1968. And the beavers, as scientists have determined, laid the first log in their record-breaking dam around 1975. That is, they still have time to catch up. Beavers continue construction.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY