Ants treat certain leg injuries with lifesaving amputations

Lab experiments show that some ants will treat the injured legs of comrades, and when it's necessary will even perform medical amputations.

“Not only can they do this, but they are even able to diagnose the wounds and, depending on the location, adapt the treatment accordingly to maximize the survival chances of the injured,” sayshow termite-hunting ants in the tropics substantially reduce the death rate among injured nestmates by treating their wounds with antibiotic secretions that come from a special gland..

To see how amputations helped, the researchers experimentally infected open leg wounds on ants with pathogens. They found that the kind of amputations that ants did would stop the infection from spreading and becoming lethal. Frank and his colleagues were puzzling over why amputation solely seemed to work for upper-leg injuries, until they closely studied the leg’s anatomy. They saw that muscles in the upper leg normally help move blood-like liquid through an ant’s body. It’s those muscles that get damaged when an upper-leg injury occurs. This means that bacteria or other pathogens in an upper-leg injury would spread to the rest of the body more slowly than they would from a lower-leg injury.

Still, he cautions that it’s not like ant medics are evaluating the wound and consciously weighing the pros and cons of treatment options, like a human doctor would.

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