I was fascinated by permaculture and tried my hand at digging pits, swales and ponds. We would hire local earthmoving machines to dig large amounts of mud.
Over time I observed that the operators of these machines would never - 1. Break a termite mound 2. Cut a ficus tree
Long story short, we now try to incorporate termites into our work. And even rats!
Normally, every pit you dig for water recharge eventually fills up with biomass and silt. We plant root based crops like sweet potato and tapioca inside the pits to attract rats and termites.
They dig deep beneath the pits and multiply surface area of soil-air boundary millions of times over.
I am beginning to belive that a lot of nature's algorithmic intelligence is in surface areas, folding, unfolding.
A tree takes up a square metre on the ground but creates many football fields worth of leaf areas over. A termite mound does the same below.
I heard that Sri Lanka had terminated rats and as a second order effect, their aquifers dried out. They later had to import rats.
Hats off to termites - a very difficult to understand algorithm of mother nature.