Many insects operate as a superorganism, meaning their sense of self does not exist as an individual, but as a whole colony.

Their reactive behaviour has been likened to the way neurons function inside the human body.

Does the superorganism have a body?

Termites, ants and wasps, among many others, build structures to house the superorganism.

A termite mound is made from earth. It functions as a lung which breathes and regulates temperature.

Within the mound, wood that has been pulped by microbes inside the gut of the termite, is moulded to harvest a rare fungus. 

This area has been termed the stomach.

The gut microbes are bodies within a termite body within a mound body.

Ants will inhabit patches of rotting wood inside a living tree, turning small crevices into a nest.

Wasps build paper nests from dead wood, where some larvae are nurtured inside purpose-built cells. 

Here, wood fibres become both skin and womb.

The fibres are both technology, and an intimately connected extension of the body.

In the forest, decaying wood is not waste, but entangled with the superorganism.

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Creepy crawlies used to be everywhere

That one day of the year where the daddy-long-legs hatch and fill the house, clumsily bumping into you in the shower. 

Worms in mud pies

Spiders waiting in piles of clothes left on the floor

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Creepy crawlies occupy some of my earliest memories 

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