Humans (myself included) like to think of ourselves as the most important species on our planet, but we are sorely wrong. If we all ceased to be, the world and nearly all of its species would survive–and probably thrive. But the so-called eusocial insects, bees, ants, and termites, fill such important ecological niches that were they to disappear, so too would most of the life on the Earth. Bees are the most prolific pollinators in most of the world’s biomes, while ants and termites both play vital roles in maintaining soil health and decomposing dead plant matter.
The termites are the most ancient social insects and first evolved around 145 million years ago. The first termites were really ancient cockroaches that hosted cellulose-digesting bacteria in their guts. Since then, thousands of new species developed; there are over 2,600 today. Termites flourished almost immediately because they were capable of digesting wood fibers, or cellulose, as few other land animals could. This symbiosis proved particularly successful, and once termites had evolved that capability, they never looked back. In today’s tropical rain forests, as they have for over 100 million years, they are the primary decomposers, consuming almost all of the dead wood and plant material.
Their success can be measured in the millions of tons; termites comprise as much as 10% of the total biomass of all the world’s land animals. The only insects more massive and numerous than the termites are the ants, their mortal enemy. To protect their colonies, the termites evolved a caste of soldiers with highly specialized weapons. Some termite soldiers can spray toxins from their foreheads, others use enormous jaws to destroy invaders, while other have heads so large that they block tunnels and prevent ant invasions.
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If there truly is some extraterrestrial Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy it would undoubtedly list a total solar eclipse as one of the sights to see while taking a break from probing Earth’s natives. Total solar eclipses, called totality for short, are pretty rare here on Earth; a casual observer might see only one or two during their lifetime. 
Natural disasters are tragedies that usually strike randomly and infrequently – unless you happen to live in the Huang He River (colonially referred to as the Yellow River) valley in China. In the space of just over 50 years between 1887 and 1943, some 10 million people drowned or died of famine and disease as the result of catastrophic floods. 
Yellowstone National Park is a wonder of the natural world. Its geysers, hot springs, and bubbling mud pools are some of the most impressive examples of geologic activity, and amaze even those who have never visited the park (including myself). Yellowstone became the first National Park in the world when President Grant set it aside for all of posterity in 1872. The dawning of the age of the automobile brought a huge surge of interest in the park, and was the inspiration for the Yogi Bear cartoon.
Few species on Earth communicate as frequently and effectively as human beings, and none so majestically or ubiquitously as whales. Immersed in an environment rich in sound but poor in light, whales and dolphins developed complex communication systems that they use to mate, feed, socialize, and navigate. The “vocabulary” of some types of whales such as the beluga and humpback is expansive, and rivals most non-humans creatures. Others can communicate over vast distances across the abyss. And, while not strictly communication, many dolphin and whale species use advanced echolocation to hunt and navigate. 
As you read this sentence, six grown adults are spending their waking and sleeping hours pretending they are on Mars. For several weeks they will live in a two-story mockup of a spaceship parked in the Utah desert, don spacesuits to explore the territory around the base, and labor under the apparent delusion that they are 150 million miles away. 
On July 25th, 2001 a strange rain began to fall over Kerala, India. For three months intermittent reports of colored rains came in from a several hundred kilometer long strip of coastal India. Just prior to the first reported cases of red rains, reports of sonic booms in the Kerala region suggested that perhaps a comet or asteroid had disintegrated high in the atmosphere, a phenomenon known as an airburst. Two scientists, Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar, collected samples of the red rain and reported that the red coloration came from some unidentified particle which showed biological activity. Did Louis and Kumar uncover the first hard evidence of alien life here on Earth?
Humans have engaged in engineering on a massive scale for thousands of years, but only recently have we gained the ability to truly alter the face of the Earth. The one human structure visible from space when John Glenn looked out the window of Freedom 7 was China’s Great Wall. Today, in addition to that barely distinguishable wavering line, International Space Station crew members can look down and see tiny palm trees sprouting into the Persian Gulf, or even locate themselves on the world’s largest map.