Can you Hear Termites?

Termites are interesting creatures and even more fascinating when you find out that they can make noise that you can hear with the human ear. Clients ring us all the time saying that they can hear a tapping or knocking noise coming out of their walls and want to know what it could be.

In Sydney a lot of people don’t think termites can make any noise as they are so small but actually they can make noise by banging their heads onto timbers. This is a defensive alarm noise created by the soldier termites and the noise signals to the rest of the colony through the workings that they are under attack.

Like ringing a lunch bell in a school yard, when the termites hear the tapping noise, they immediately rush to the area where the noise is coming from. This is then quickly followed by the worker termites that will gather materials to do repair work.

The Sydney Jim’s Termite & Pest Control technicians may ask to put a small hole in your wall and will then mimic this noise by lightly tapping near the hole. This encourages the termites to rush to the area where the local Sydney technician can identify what species you have.

Jim’s Termite & Pest Control Sydney gets a lot of people ringing and asking if you can hear termites eating timbers in your home. The answer to this is that you cannot hear termites eating timbers, the only noise you can hear is the soldier termites banging their heads which clients mistake for termites eating.

When you discover termites in your walls if you are really quite you can quite often hear the termite tapping noise. If you then watch their behaviours you will see the soldier termites come and stick their heads out. If you watch long enough and threaten the termites you may actually witness the worker termites sealing the soldier termites in the hole.

The soldier termite heads are very hard with their only job being to protect the colony and queen from attack by predators. When they detect that the colony is under attack the will call for reinforcements and sacrifice themselves to protect the colony.

Ants and other predators find it very hard to attack the soldier termites as their heads are so hard and almost impenetrable. Sometimes if you check out the rubbish that ants remove from their nests you can quite often find the uneaten heads of termites.

If you are interested on hearing termites then ask your local Sydney Jim’s Termite & Pest Control technician as most of them have recordings of the noise they make and will be only too happy to play it for you.