• glimse@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    I don’t know much about termites so the “century-old” part raised an eyebrow…but nope, he didn’t make that up

    The caatinga ecoregion in northeast Brazil has about 200 million termite mounds […] Scientists performed radioactive dating on 11 mounds. The youngest mound was 690 years old. The oldest was at least 3,820 years and possibly more than twice that.

    How about that. But that’s in Brazil and aardvarks are only native to Africa

    Scientists in South Africa have discovered the world’s oldest known active termite mounds […] with some dating as far back as 34,000 year

    Oh. Damn.

    • PassingDuchy@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Reminds me of a Japanese “ghost story” I read (dunno how authentic this is, I got it out of the Barnes and Noble discount bin lol) about a man who falls asleep under a tree and isekais into the ant colony around the tree which has a long and storied history, living out a life where he married the princess, has daughters, died and was entombed before waking up and digging up the ant colony to find his own tomb.

      I don’t like bugs, but I would watch this kind of story around a termite colony…