WIRE-EATING ANTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1921, Page 10

WIRE-EATING ANTS.

REM ARK ABLE DISCOVERY ELECTRIC CABLE BORED. Young, April 20. Officers and employees of the telephone repair service, seeking an obstruction which, after the rains, had interfered with 59 telephones on the Young exchange, made the unique discovery of white ants among the live wires in an underground cable. A cable buried 18 inches was found to contain a hole the size of a small pea, and indications point to the conclusion that white ants had eaten through the lead, causing the leak. When laid down, each separate wire was wrapped in paper; the whole of the wires were also wrapped in paper, and 1 encased in lead weighing 71b to the square foot. z The lead was covered with soft paraffin, and then the whole cable covered with timber which had been specially treated with arsenic and tar. The boards were white-anted through, and a hole identical with that usually made by white ants was bored through the lead. The paper inside the cable was eaten by white ants. Some of the ants caught within the cable arc being preserved, and they are healthy specimens. This is believed to be the first occasion upon which white ants have been known to bore through the telephone cables, though a parasite known as “the borer,” in Queensland, is said to have often caused similar trouble.