Last year, a species of ant was captured. Antibiotic use Now another individual has been observed performing amputation surgery.
Researchers have now confirmed in experiments that this surgery and other peer-to-peer treatments actually save the ants’ lives.
We’ve known for years that ants treat each other’s wounds, but it was only recently that we discovered how incredibly complex and precise their medical procedures can be.
“The ants can diagnose the wound and determine whether it is infected or sterile, and over a long period of time other individuals can treat it accordingly.” explain Eric Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany.
“The only health system that could match this would be the human health system.”
Frank and colleagues analyzed damage to the legs of Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanusWhen the shin-like tibia wounds were left untreated, only 15 percent of the ants survived.
But when nestmates were allowed to tend to the wounds, the injured ants’ survival rate rose to a whopping 75 percent.
The wound on the shin was treated with an oral wash, and the treating ant held down the weaker injured leg with its mandibles and front legs and licked the wound for a long period of time.
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But when carpenter ants encountered a colony-mate with a wound in the area equivalent to a human thigh, the tiny surgeon first cleaned the wound and then amputated the leg, which meant biting repeatedly until the injured limb was amputated.
Ants whose femur wounds were left untreated had a 40% chance of survival, but after amputation, that rose to around 90%.
![The four steps to amputating an ant's leg: lick, chew, remove, lick](https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2024/07/AntSurgicalProcedureFourStepsLickingBitingRemovingLickingHannaHaringSmall.jpg)
But ants did not amputate their legs when the injury was near the tibia, so Frank and his team experimentally amputated the legs of ants with tibia injuries and found that this did not improve the survival rate of these ants.
“With a tibia injury, the hemolymph flow is less impeded, allowing bacteria to enter the body more quickly, whereas with a femur injury, blood circulates more slowly in the leg.” To tell Frank.
It takes the ants 40 minutes to surgically amputate a nestmate’s leg.
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“So because the ants can’t cut their legs fast enough to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, they try to limit the possibility of a fatal infection by spending more time cleaning the wound in their shin.” explain Laurent Keller, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Infectious diseases are a major threat to animals, especially social species that live in close proximity, increasing the risk of infection.
Insects are known to mitigate some of these risks. Either exterminate the infected larvae or leave the nest to die In quarantine.
![Diagram of the anatomy of an ant's leg.](https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2024/07/AnatomyOfAnAntLegIncludingTransverseSections.jpg)
Medical care for nestmates is likely one such strategy, but how it emerged in ants is an intriguing question, given that there is little evidence that ants can learn. The researchers think this suggests that such behaviour, albeit complex, may be innate, but they hope to conduct further experiments to tease out the details.
“An ant holds out its injured leg, allows another ant to bite it off, completely of its own accord, and then shows the new wound to the other ant. [the] The cleaning process – this level of natural cooperation is very impressive to me.” To tell Frank.
This study Current Biology.