Colony of ants amputates the leg of a seriously injured ant to save its life in a discovery that puts them closer to humans in their treatment of injury than any other living animal.
The video shows the injured ant marked in yellow while others mill around it. Two ants appear to be trying to ‘treat’ their injured comrade, with one of them biting its injured leg off with pinpoint precision in the thigh area.
The study was led by behavioural ecologist Dr Erik Frank from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany and was published in Current Biology.
He said: “The fact that the ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it’s infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals – the only medical system that can rival that would be the human one.”
His team made the impressive discovery, saying in a statement obtained by Newsflash: “In an emergency, ants bite off injured limbs of fellow ants to ensure their survival. Whether they take this radical step depends on the location of the wound.
“They exhibit a behaviour that was previously only known in humans: Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) amputate limbs as a precautionary measure to save the lives of wounded conspecifics. In the case of certain injuries to the legs, they bite them off completely.
“This brutal procedure prevents life-threatening wound infections from spreading through the ants’ bodies. The success rate is very good: around 90 per cent of the amputated animals survive the treatment. Despite the loss of one of their six legs, they are then able to resume their full range of tasks in the nest.
“Researchers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland report this in the journal Current Biology.
“The team led by Dr Erik Frank from the JMU Biocentre and Dr Laurent Keller from Lausanne made another astonishing observation: The ants only proceed to amputation if the leg injuries are on the thigh (femur) – regardless of whether the wounds are sterile or infected with bacteria.
“If, on the other hand, the wounds are on the lower leg (tibia), they never amputate. Instead, the ants put more effort into caring for the wounded in such cases: They lick the wounds intensively.
“This is presumably a mechanical way of removing bacteria. This therapy is also relatively successful, with a survival rate of around 75 per cent.”
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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