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| Giant Northern Termite photo from CSIRO, Australia not copyrighted |
It may not be geological fluid dynamics, but at least the headline is fun (and it is related to fluid mechanics, see below!) The Christian Science Monitor reported today that an "army of termites munched through 10 milion rupees ($222,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank" in northern India. The "police have registered a case of negligence against bank officials," a procedure for opening an investigation.
So, what is a termite? Not being a biologist, I had to look this one up. Ah, they are closely related to wood-eating cockroaches, an insect that we know all too well in our ancient geology building! The oldest termite fossils date to the early Cretaceous; the Cretaceous extends from 145.5-65.5 million years ago, ending with the giant K/T impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. It is likely that they extend farther back in geologic time by perhaps another 100 million years.
Termites, like ants, some bees, and wasps divid labor among castes (workers, soldiers and reproductive individuals) and are guided by swarm intelligence to exploit food sources. Swarm intelligence (SI) is a property of decentralized, self-organized systems, and is a concept employed in work on artificial intelligence. In a swarm, simple "agents" interact locally with one another according to very simple rules. The interactions between such agents leads to the emergence of intelligent behavior at a scale much larger than that of the individual agents. Prominent biological examples are ant colonies, bird flocks, bacterial growth and fish schools. Concepts have also been used in some models of river system formation to optimize the routes of water as it runs from mountains to the oceans. Topography is represented by a grid, and a set of rules is established that directs any water at a point on the grid to a lower place. The process is repeated until the water reaches the ocean, at which point a river network has been established at a scale much larger than any of the interacting grid cells. Voila--fluid mechanics!
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