Ants carry out surgeries, amputate injured legs of fellow nest mates
WeirdNews
These ants are able to assess which part of the body needs amputation
(Web Desk) - Ants have often been observed displaying humane behaviour, such as carrying their injured partners.
Now, another surprising attribute has been seen in ants who seem to be surgeons as well. Scientists have observed ants perform emergency amputations on fellow ants who sustained injuries on their legs to prevent the spread of infection.
This is the first time that a non-human animal has been seen carrying out life-saving amputations.
Florida carpenter ants can assess the wound, clean it and accordingly proceed to diagnose it and whether an amputation can save the life of the ant.
Erik Frank, a behavioural ecologist from the University of Würzburg, said in a statement, "When we're talking about amputation behaviour, this is literally the only case in which a sophisticated and systematic amputation of an individual by another member of its species occurs in the animal Kingdom."
SURGERY CARRIED OUT BY ANTS
Frank and his colleagues wrote in the journal Current Biology that they cut the Florida carpenter ants on their right hind limb and observed the nest mates for a week.
The results astonished them as they noticed that 13 of 17 ants with injuries on their femur or thigh had undergone amputation conducted by their mates.
“Nest mates would begin licking the wound before moving up the injured limb with their mouthparts until they reached the trochanter. The nest mates then proceeded to repeatedly bite the injured leg until it was cut off,” the team wrote.
Other ants with injuries on their tibia, or lower leg, only received treatment in the form of wound licking.
The survival rate for both groups of ants was quite high, the researchers found.
The decision to whether to amputate or simply treat the injury was based on the location of the injury. These ants are able to assess which part of the body needs an amputation, which takes around 40 minutes, and which can simply be treated.
The blood flow in the femur is rather slow because of the injury, and so the ants have time to remove the limb to prevent infection from spreading.
However, in the tibia, the blood flow is faster leaving them with not enough time for amputation as that would lead to the infection spreading.
