© Murundus in BrazilROY FUNCH
Their huge mounds cover an area the size of Britain, and are visible from space.
In the east of Brazil, mysterious cones of earth rise from the dry, hard-baked soil. Each of these mounds is about 30 feet wide at its base, and stands six to 13 feet tall. From the ground, with about 60 feet of overgrown land separating each mound from its neighbors, it's hard to tell how many there are. But their true extent becomes dramatically clear from space.
Using satellite images, Roy Funch from the State University of Feira de Santana has estimated that there are about 200 million of these mounds. They're arrayed in an uncannily regular honeycomb-like pattern. Together, they cover an area roughly the size of Great Britain or Oregon, and they occupy as much space as the Great Pyramid of Giza 4,000 times over. And this colossal feat of engineering is, according to Funch, the work of the tiniest of engineers-a species of termite called Syntermes dirus, whose workers are barely half an inch long.
Termites are well known for creating elaborate nests, with vast networks of underground tunnels. Many species create skyscraping chimneys atop these lairs to ventilate the underground chambers, and in some African species, these
mounds can tower 30 feet high. But the Brazilian mounds are neither chimneys nor nests. They're just amorphous lumps of soil, with no internal structures. Nothing lives inside them. Instead, "they're just slag piles," says Funch.
Comment: What a surprise - a genetic modification technology that doesn't work. Will the wonders of man's hubris never cease?
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