Product Description

Watch one of nature's hardest-working insect families in action--termites! Hundreds of thousands of termites can live together in one nest. The termite queen spends her life laying eggs. The eggs hatch into workers that clean the queen, watch over the eggs, search for food, tend the nest's gardens, and guard the nest and each other. But a termite family's most amazing feat is building the huge mound that protects the nest. Thousands of tiny termites take mouthfuls of soil from ground level and climb to the top of the mound. Mouthful by mouthful, the soil piles up until the mound is up to six feet (3 meters) across! In this exciting book, you can learn what makes mound-building termites similar to and different from other insects. Close-up photographs and diagrams reveal extraordinary details about termites' bodies, both inside and out. And you can perform an experiment that shows you how termites use scent trails to find their way to food and home again. Learn more about this exciting member of nature's fascinating Insect World.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2312484 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Library Binding
• 48 pages

About the Author
Sandra Markle is the author of numerous critically acclaimed science books for children. A nationally known science teacher, Ms. Markle also authored the award-winning Animal Predator and Animal Scavenger series for Lerner Publications. She lives in New Zealand with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Even the most seasoned bug hater will be interested in learning abut the African mound-builder in this book!
Termites are bugs you wouldn't be exactly thrilled to catch in your bug trap or have chewing away at your house, but they are fascinating creatures you might want to read about. Termites are arthropods and their bodies are "divided into segments, jointed legs, and a stiff exoskeleton." There are more than 2,000 different types of termites, but this book takes a close look at "the African mound-building termite." Unlike ants they live in colonies in mounds that the author has aptly dubbed "the skyscrapers of the insect world." Ants and termites appear to be quite similar, but this book's description of the two makes it easy to differentiate between the two.

There are two double page spreads of a mound-building queen. One is of an exterior photographic view, the other is an illustrated cross section. These pages give the reader a very good visual imagery of the queen. In this book you will learn about the three stage incomplete metamorphosis of the termite, the roles of the queen, king and their offspring, the life spans of the termites, their breeding habits, the "family" life, how they care for their young, their food sources, how they build their combs, their unusual food sharing habits, how they build their "cone-shaped mound" (WOW!) and how they defend themselves against predators.

This is a very well written and researched book and even the most seasoned bug hater will be interested in learning abut the African mound-builder. There are magnificent photographs on almost every page and scattered "Termite Facts" scattered throughout the book. In the back of the book is a glossary, an index, additional information on "termites and other insect families," "termite activities" and additional recommended book and website resources. This is one of eight books in the "Insect World Series," an excellent science series you might wish to consider for your library, classroom or homeschool shelves!