ItalianTermiteMan
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2023
- Messages
- 146
Here i am sharing with you a beautiful pic of a major soldier of Macrotermes gilvus, a very common fungus-growing termite from south-east Asia and the only Macrotermes species to have colonized the Philipphines.
This species is quite small for Macrotermes' standards (this major soldier is around one cm in lenght), but personally i like it a lot: major soldiers are brightly colored, stocky and sport greatly expanded thoracic lobes, giving them a rather cute appearance. Their huge red heads is heavily sclerotized and serves both as a sort of frontal "shield" and to house the massive muscles used to operate their razor-sharp mandibles, giving these tiny critters a very powerful cutting bite... it's nothing to scoff at for an animal this small to be able to slice trough human skin and draw blood, as i often experienced during a trip to Thailand!
Pic by Inaturalist user "Sukkhee" (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/sukkhee); Pak Nam Pram, Pran Buri district, Thailand.
Released under the Attribution-NonCommercial CC licence.
This species is quite small for Macrotermes' standards (this major soldier is around one cm in lenght), but personally i like it a lot: major soldiers are brightly colored, stocky and sport greatly expanded thoracic lobes, giving them a rather cute appearance. Their huge red heads is heavily sclerotized and serves both as a sort of frontal "shield" and to house the massive muscles used to operate their razor-sharp mandibles, giving these tiny critters a very powerful cutting bite... it's nothing to scoff at for an animal this small to be able to slice trough human skin and draw blood, as i often experienced during a trip to Thailand!
Pic by Inaturalist user "Sukkhee" (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/sukkhee); Pak Nam Pram, Pran Buri district, Thailand.
Released under the Attribution-NonCommercial CC licence.