Gold bug

In the latest GG@Treasure mag there is an article about this bug in certain ground that extracts the very minute gold from the soil and poops it out as a nugget and thats why gold nuggets can be found where there is no evidence of reefs or the normal sources nearby---so the article says!!   Can,t  remember the whole storey as i loaned the mag to a mate who looked at me like i was an alien when i told him. Anyway, have a read and remember----- DON,T shoot the messenger!!    cheers,john

Heard of this some years ago under the heading of "bug nuggets", seems the little critters absorb microscopic gold particles and poop them out to form some sort of a capsule that will eventually surround them.

Anyway these capsules are the start of nuggets that grow in situ, as they grow by other microscopic particles of gold in the surrounding soil adhering themselves to it, apparently they have been able to emulate it in the laboritory but it is a very very slow process, but as we know nature has infinite time to do this sort of thing, then we dig them up and steal them.

They are saying that this is why nuggets are found in some places where there of course is very fine gold but no known origin such as a reef or pipe from which a nugget could have broken away from, and if memory serves me I seem to recall that they were also saying that this is why nuggets are found in situ in hard laterite gravels, pieces that I have found in gravels are often ugly and attached to the gravels and appear to have sort of just filled the gaps between the gravel rocks, if they have formed in situ then it would make sense that they appear the way they sometimes do, rather than having been placed by soil activity as an already solid mass into the gravels, some time after breaking away from another source.

Interesting subject, further to this gold particles can be so microscopic that they are absorbed by plants,and vegetation can be teted for the gold content in the plants cells counted in the parts per million/billion?, anyway by sampling plants that take up water and the microscopic gold from the ground they can determine if there is a lode deep underground etc.

The term used for the study of plants and insects that can give signs to the presence of underground lodes is called "geobotanical prospecting" or something to that effect, it is commonly known that certain plants do better in areas with high concentrations of some minerals, also even the Incas and other early civisations used careful sampling of ant mounds for fragments of precious stones and fine gold that the ants would bring up from underground.

Also termite mounds can be tested for gold concentrations as well, as they too bring up mud and tiny particles of gold from some metres under the grounds surface, of course its all too fine to be seen with the naked eye, but when you think about it in areas that have a lot of overburden covering the surface and nothing to be seen to indicate deposits then sampling of anything brought up from underground could lead you to uncover a lode or deposit that has so far been missed by prospectors and geologists.

au-fever