When we head out on a game drive, our attention goes up and out. Into the trees for leopards, across the grass for lions, along the drainage lines for whatever might be moving through. That’s where the action is — or at least, that’s where we’ve been trained to look.
But I’ve been thinking lately about everything we step over on the way there.
The African bush is far more than what sits above eye level. Every metre of ground we drive across is a world unto itself: roots, fungi, insects, burrows, tunnels and countless organisms, all going about their business completely below our notice. It is one of the busiest places in the bush, and we almost never see any of it.
The easiest place to start is with the soil. Not the most glamorous entry point, I’ll admit, but bear with me. Healthy soil stores water, breaks down organic material and provides the nutrient base for everything that grows above it. That bare, cracked patch of earth between two bushes that you barely registered on your last drive? It’s likely full of activity.
Termites are the most obvious example. Their mounds are impossible to miss, those great terracotta towers scattered across the landscape- but the mound itself is really just the exhaust vent of something far more extensive underground. Beneath the surface lies a network of chambers and tunnels housing thousands of individuals, and at the heart of many colonies, a fungus garden that the termites actively farm for food. The relationship between termites, their mounds and the trees that eventually grow on top of them is one of the more remarkable ecological stories in the bushveld — one we explored in depth here.
And then there are the roots themselves.
A tree looks like a single organism. What we don’t see is that much of its life is happening underground, in a web of roots and fungal partnerships that can stretch far beyond what the canopy above would suggest.
Mycorrhizal fungi attach to root systems and act as an extension of them, dramatically increasing a tree’s ability to access water and nutrients from the soil. In return, the tree feeds the fungi with sugars. It’s an arrangement so fundamental that most plants couldn’t survive without it, and it connects trees to one another in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
Beneath the leaf litter, the same quiet industry continues. Beetles, ants, spiders, worms and countless other invertebrates are constantly breaking down dead material and cycling it back into the system. Even an animal that dies on the open plain doesn’t simply disappear — its body gradually becomes part of the soil, feeding the roots that feed the trees that shade the next generation of animals.
Nothing is wasted. Nothing actually ends. It just moves into a different form.
I think what strikes me most about all of this is how much effort the bush puts into staying invisible. The drama we come here for — the hunt, the kill, the courtship, the standoff — plays out above the surface. But the system that makes all of that possible is almost entirely out of sight. The next time you’re sitting on a game drive, waiting for something to appear, look down for a moment. There’s a reasonable chance that the most complex thing happening right now is directly beneath your feet.
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on The World Beneath Our Feet