What Mark and I Can Learn From Termites

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 Litchfield Safari Camp, Litchfield National Park, NT 

On our drive from Katherine to Litchfield, we saw a tourist sign for ‘Termite Mounds’. Well, it turns out there are ‘magnetic termites’ who always build their mounds north to south facing. As you can see from the field of these termites mounds, they all align perfectly with each other. 

A single magnetic termite mound

A whole flood plain of north-south aligned termite mounds 

The uncanny thing is that, last night, Mark said to me “all the caravans and motorhomes in this park are all parked the same way, at the same angle, except for us. What is going on?”

Apparently researchers investigated what happens if the termite mounds are turned in a different direction to north and south. What happens with this deviation is that the termites get too hot and die. Whereas when the direction is north and south, one side of the mound always has shade, which means the termites can move out of the sun and thereby survive. 

Extrapolating from that, from an evolutionary perspective, the out-of-alignment campervan parking that Mark and I engage in will probably lead to us overheating and dying out. So our parking behaviour will not be perpetuated. Or alternatively, and more optimistically, we might adapt, as per previous blog, and get better at copying what others are doing. We shall see!

Other than the termite mounds, mostly a day of driving…

Interesting to see a combination of palm trees (wet season?) analysis (dry season?) as typical here

Very lush in places 

In the evening on arrival, I had a swim at an even more impressive swimming pool in the caravan park than yesterday. The further north we go, the better the swimming pools… Another example of adaptive evolution!

Just before dinner, had lovely catch up with Carol B in the UK who did a similar trip to this several years ago. Carol found it strange that “all the Australians go into their vans at night and watch tv instead of looking at the stars”. I had to confess we go inside our motorhome to watch movies at night! But I do like to look at the stars when I go to the ladies in the middle of the night too!

Congrats to Suzy for getting into the college band! 

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