Ants perform amputations on injured nestmates to save their lives, according to a new study. The research published in the journal Current Biology found that Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) can assess wound locations and adjust their treatment accordingly —a level of medical intervention previously only observed in humans. “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,” said Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany and lead author of the study. The research team observed that when a carpenter ant’s leg was injured at the thigh (femur), other ants would bite off the entire limb at the base. This radical procedure prevented life-threatening infections from spreading through the injured ant’s body. Remarkably, about 90% of the amputated ants survived the treatment and resumed their full range of duties in the nest despite losing one of their six legs. “Our study proves for the first time that animals also use prophylactic amputations in the course of wound treatment. And it shows that the ants orientate the treatment to the type of injury,” said Laurent Keller, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and senior author of the study. https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/08/02180759/4mbvid.mp4 A Florida carpenter ant amputating the leg of a nestmate in a laboratory experiment. Video by Dany Buffat. When…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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