- > The ants carry out prophylactic amputations. This not only protects the colony from infection but also doubles the survival rate of the injured workers.
To keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too.
Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards.
To let disease run amok in your own neighborhood it would be very costly.
- So the colony's "medical staff" are basically the people between jobs who happen to know everyone
- Surgery, antimicrobials, farming crops, animal husbandry... humans are late to the game.
- I’m surprised they don’t just eject the injured worker from the colony. I wonder if there are specific tasks the amputated ant then goes on to do, or if they resume their former duties at a lower speed.
by mallomarmeasle
2 subcomments
- That is super cool. Unfortunately I cannot access the original article to see the methodology, but they mention using a system that can track individual ants in a colony of ~100.
I wonder what kind of biometrics allow that. The ants do not seem to be tagged individually in the linked video: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...
Not to be too speciesist, but the ants kind of all look the same to me.
- Fascinating. Hidden on the bottom of the article seems to be a video [1] showcasing how they track each ant out of the six colonies of 110 each.
I'd like to read the paper to skim over the methodology but it's not open-access :(
[1] https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...
by merryocha
1 subcomments
- If you're interested in ants (and even if you're not) I highly recommend the book Journey to the Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson.
by HelloUsername
0 subcomment
- Related video? "Cordyceps: attack of the killer fungi - Planet Earth Attenborough BBC wildlife" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8 (2008)
- Fascinating stuff, I wonder if nature is reusing the "care" neuro-circuitry or if it's some other mechanism. Brood care and fellow care seem to be related by that thread. Would love to see those ants fMRIs at each stage.
by benjaminard
1 subcomments
- And the injured ant just sits there and takes it, probably in pain, because I'm guessing it also knows that it's best for the colony. Fascinating.
- we need to mimmick this behaviour in a drone swarm, as well as the reverse, bringing a replacement and reattaching.
by robotnikman
0 subcomment
- I wonder if Bees also show similar behavior
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