Certain ants deliberately amputate the limbs of seriously injured members of their species. Saving lives through surgery is not just reserved for humans, as a new study in the journal Current Biology shows.
The choice of treatment – amputation or wound cleaning – for Florida Carpenter Ants (also called Florida Carpenter Ants) is tailored to the type of wound, a team led by Laurent Keller, a former professor at the University of Lausanne, found in the study.
When thigh injuries occurred, the scientists noted that the ants always amputated the injured leg. However, for shin injuries, they did not amputate, but cleaned the wound with their jaws, called mandibles.
In both cases, these interventions led to a significantly higher survival rate for the injured animals, Keller explained to the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA. According to the researcher, the type of care seems to be related to the risk of infection.
Source: Krone
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