It turns out that termites have been doing agriculture long before the human race


ByOlearys

Cenozoic"Farm" fossil where termites planted mushrooms in the nest was found in Africa and Tanzania. Fossils were considered to be 25 million years ago, and it turned out that it was not a human being but a termite who initiated agriculture the earliest in history.

PLOS ONE: Oligocene Termite Nests with In Situ Fungus Gardens from the Rukwa Rift Basin, Tanzania, Support a Paleogene African Origin for Insect Agriculture
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156847


Termites figured out farming 25 million years before people did - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/23/termites-figured-out-farming-25-million-years-before-people-did/

Termites were farming 25 million years ago - long before humans | The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/25/12024324/termite-farming-25-million-years-ago-before-humans

Australia's James Cook University Earth and Marine Science Research Team found fossils of "fungal farms" used by 25 million years of termites to cultivate mushrooms in the Rukwalift Basin of Tanzania and published the findings in scientific journals · It was announced at PLOS ONE. As a result of investigating the fossil of the fungi farm found, it was a termite similar to the kind called "macrotelmes subfamily" that cultivated mushrooms, growing fungi in a farm sized as softball Made of vegetable material to make itpelletIt was said that it was packed. The pellets were made of what the termites made by crushing materials that can not be digested.

Although termites can only eat mushrooms, it is thought that they could survive much more efficiently by raising nutritious mushrooms that can eat termites with materials that they can not digest. In addition, the mushrooms that the termites were raising turned out to be of a kind that only grows in agriculture, indicating that symbiotic relations between termites and fungi continued for millions of years.


Eric Roberts, who led the research, said, "The fossils found record the evolution of termites and fungi and enable symbiotic relationships to be traced back to ancient times." It is believed that this termite has succeeded in spreading habitat from Africa to Asia thanks to successful mushroom farming. Human beings succeed in habitat expansion by agriculture after several million years from the success of termites.

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in Science,   Creature, Posted by darkhorse_log