Termite Facts We Bet You Didn’t Know!

Everyone knows termites can be expensive and can cause substantial amounts of damage to your house. But termites are also very interesting insects so we have dug up some of the most surprising and interesting facts we could find.

• Termites are like the vampires of nature, they never sleep working 24 hours a day 7 days a week and they can die if exposed to sunlight.
• Termite Queens lay in excess of 40,000 eggs per day
• In Zaire, termites are fried and sold as fast food in street stalls
• In some countries termites are made into cooking oils
• Termites pass more gas than humans and its some of the highest quality methane gas in the world. Due to the high amounts of gas they produce some scientist believe that termites collectively produce more greenhouse gasses each year that all of human industry combined
• Termite nests have been known to contain up to 2 million termites per nest
• Termites contain more protein per gram than beef
• Termite Queens can grow to the size of a pencil in length and live for around 15-25 years
• Fossilised termites show that they first appeared on earth 250 million years ago, approximately 30 million years before dinosaurs
• In Australia one Termite Nest was so large that it measured 10 Meters across and contained over 3 Million termites , it was built so well scientist needed a jackhammer to break it open
• It is estimate that for every human on earth there are over 1000 pounds of termites
• Termites travel about 250 feet from the colony in the hunt for food, that’s the equivalent of you traveling over 7km’s for lunch.
• Although termites are commonly called white ants, they are not ants, they are more closely related to cockroaches, which has led to some people calling them social cockroaches.

What did you find most interesting? Was there something on there you didn’t know? Pull these facts out at the office Christmas party and amazing your friends with the knowledge of termites.