Termites 'engineer fairy circles'

[dipsydoodle]

A German scientist thinks he can now explain the strange rings of grass that cover great swathes of desert-margin land in southwestern Africa.

These so-called fairy circles have variously been pinned on the presence of other, poisonous plants, on ants, and even toxic gases rising from below.

But Norbert Juergens says the one ever-present factor is sand termites.

The creatures have engineered the rings to maintain a supply of water in their environment, he tells Science magazine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21970408

[In_The_Wind]

1. Very cool!

[dipsydoodle]

2. I bet the clever little rascals couldn't do this

[caseymoz]

3. They're also taking over New Orleans

. . . and will probably manage it better than human beings ever did.

[BainsBane]

4. they covered this on All Things Considered

On Sunday. Interesting.

[DetlefK]

5. Concerning the theory at the end of the article:

It can't be a phenomenon of the plants in general: If the pattern were a collective build-up of a behavior of individual plants, seeking to establish a preferred distance to neighbors, those rings would have melded into a hex-pattern (because hexagons can cover a 2-dimensional surface with a minimum of edges/closest neighbors) over the course of generations.