Munchings

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Do the sounds of food being eaten affect our perception on the

beneficial or not nature of the food being consumed?

Sex seems spurious.

See:

Nature 434, 154 (10 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434154a

Animal behaviour: Meals sized up

RORY HOWLETT

Termites are fussy eaters. A particular piece of wood may be avoided

because it is too hard or contains defensive chemicals that the

termites can't detoxify. Different termite species also vary in their

food requirements, and such selectivity may help to reduce

competition, allowing different species to coexist in the same

habitat. Even wood size matters — one species may specialize on

entire timber-framed buildings, whereas another may have an appetite

only for twigs.

Theodore A. and colleagues have tackled the problem of how

termites assess wood size (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 3732–3737;

2005). Worker drywood termites (Cryptotermes domesticus, pictured)

are blind and so cannot judge wood size visually and do not survey

the wood physically before starting to eat. The researchers

considered another possibility. Termites often communicate with

vibrational signals — soldiers, for example, may drum their heads

against the wood to warn of impending danger — and they are also

noisy eaters.

et al. wondered whether termites use vibrations generated

during foraging to judge the resonance frequency of the wood, which

is related to its size. To test this possibility, they presented

hungry worker termites with blocks of wood of different sizes. The

workers preferred blocks of a particular size, but this preference

could be specifically altered by playing them recordings of termites

feeding, or by producing artificially generated vibrations.

Remarkably, the vibrational signals also affected reproductive

development in the species, suggesting that such signals might play a

wider role in termite biology than has been appreciated.

Cheers, Al Pater.