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Ants can carry out life-saving amputations on injured nest mates, study shows
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It sounds like a scene from a Spielberg film: an injured worker undergoes an emergency amputation, performed by one of her colleagues, allowing her to live another day.
And surprisingly, the insects appear to tailor the treatment they give to the location of injury.. “The ants are able to diagnose, to some extent, the wounds and treat them accordingly to maximise the survival of the injured,” said Dr Erik Frank, from the University of Lausanne and the first author of the research.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, Frank and colleagues report how they cut Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) on their right hind limb, then observed the responses of their nest mates for a week.
The results revealed that 13 of 17 ants with injuries on their femur or thigh underwent amputation by their nest mates, with their limb severed at the trochanter – the joint with the hip bone.
However, their survival rates greatly improved if the injured ants were either returned to their colonies – suggesting the treatments provided by their nest mates were beneficial – or the infected limb was amputated by researchers, although this only brought benefits for thigh wounds.
As a result, infections of the lower leg spread around the body much faster than those of the thigh, meaning amputation of the former did little to improve survival.
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