The planet’s Ultimate Supermom Can Produce 146 Million Offspring

Termites have long been cast as villains of the insect world — pests that chew through our homes, books, and even cash. In one infamous case, a rogue colony in India devoured $220,000 in banknotes. Unlike their more celebrated cousins — bees and ants — termites get little praise for their contributions to the natural world.

But perhaps it’s time we see termites differently. These ancient, blind insects — relatives of cockroaches — have been around since the age of dinosaurs. They build sprawling, air-conditioned mounds, run complex societies with strict divisions of labor, and boast one of the most productive animals on Earth: the termite queen, capable of laying over 20,000 eggs a day for up to 20 years.

And now, science has uncovered something even more fascinating: an all-female termite society. In a 2018 study, Dr. Toshihisa Yashiro of Kyoto University discovered colonies of Glyptotermes nakajimai in Japan made up exclusively of females — no kings, no males at all.

What makes these findings so remarkable is that termite colonies are typically founded by both a queen and a king. But in these all-female colonies, reproduction continues via cloning, with queens sealing off sperm storage to prevent fertilization. This suggests termites may have evolved to sideline males entirely, relying solely on a sisterhood of queens to carry on the colony.

Even more intriguing, these unisex termite colonies seem to be thriving. They have fewer soldiers, possibly indicating greater efficiency in all-female cooperation. Genetically, they appear to be diverging from their mixed-sex counterparts — potentially evolving into a separate species after a 14-million-year split.

Yashiro’s findings could reshape how we think about gender roles in animal societies. In his words, this termite society is the first solid evidence that “males are dispensable in advanced animal societies where they once had key roles.”