[HN Gopher] Ants recognise infected wounds and treat them with a...
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Ants recognise infected wounds and treat them with antibiotics
Author : hhs
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-01-03 00:06 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uni-wuerzburg.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uni-wuerzburg.de)
| jandrese wrote:
| Or as they call them "ibiotics".
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| > If the wounds become infected, there is a significant survival
| risk. However, Matabele ants have developed a sophisticated
| healthcare system: they can distinguish between non-infected and
| infected wounds and treat the latter efficiently with antibiotics
| they produce themselves.
| eigenket wrote:
| That's insanely impressive and almost scary level of
| adaptation/smart behaviour from the ants.
|
| Edit: it feels more like something you'd read from Adrian
| Czajkowski/Tchaikovsky rather than reality.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| 90% reduction in mortality. Wow.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Have you seen what else ants can do? They are full of insanely
| impressive/scary/smart behaviors.
|
| Ants farm aphids. They don't just find aphids and collect their
| "honeydew" excretions. They actually bring the aphids to the
| plants and then tend to them.
|
| Ants harvest the sunflower seeds from my sunflowers. Not just
| some of the seeds. If I leave the flowers even one day past the
| time to harvest those seeds, the ants get every single seed.
| They do it by having some ants up on the flower popping out the
| seeds, and more ants down below collecting them off the ground.
| That's some incredible coordination. And these are tiny ants,
| not some big powerful ants. It's mind boggling to think any
| creature is able to pull it off. I'm honestly surprised they
| don't have megalithic structures built of huge stones. Though
| their underground colonies are megalithic in scale compared to
| the ants.
|
| Maybe instead of ancient aliens we should look into ants as the
| actual builders of the pyramids.
| eigenket wrote:
| I've seen and heard a lot of what they can do, but certainly
| not everything. Pretty sure humanity as a whole is very far
| from understanding everything ants do and why.
| fumar wrote:
| You might enjoy The Superorganism, a book on social insects
| including ants. I found it fascinating. I don't know if there
| is a more relevant book as it was released in 2008.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3426920
| bloopernova wrote:
| Ants can pass the mirror test too, which only a very select
| few mammals/birds have passed.
|
| https://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-
| animals-t...
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Ants really are incredible.
|
| Not only do they farm aphids, they also farm fungus.
| Leafcutter ants bring the leaves to their fungus farm. Then
| they eat the fungus.
|
| So ants farm both livestock and crops.
|
| They also form super colonies.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Assuming only the humans have certain traits or level of
| intelligence/knowledge in some areas of life becomes a more
| foolish act as we discover what other living things are capable
| of.
|
| I, for one, welcome our ant overlords.
| gwill wrote:
| >For treatment, they then apply antimicrobial compounds and
| proteins to the infected wounds. They take these antibiotics from
| the metapleural gland, which is located on the side of their
| thorax. Its secretion contains 112 components, half of which have
| an antimicrobial or wound-healing effect
|
| I was curious about this metapleural gland and found this article
| on its uses:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21504532/#:~:text=The%20meta....
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| A wound for ants
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