[HN Gopher] Ants recognise infected wounds and treat them with a...
___________________________________________________________________
Ants recognise infected wounds and treat them with antibiotics
Author : hhs
Score : 442 points
Date : 2024-01-03 00:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uni-wuerzburg.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uni-wuerzburg.de)
| jandrese wrote:
| Or as they call them "ibiotics".
| leesec wrote:
| Nice
| dataflow wrote:
| Took me a good minute to figure this out, I kept thinking it
| was some kind of anti-Apple joke I wasn't understanding.
| jamala1 wrote:
| Is the joke removing the "ant" prefix?
| dataflow wrote:
| Yes
| jandrese wrote:
| Yeah, it's a riff on the old random factoid you used to see
| all the time in papers and books where someone would be
| talking about something like Spanish Rice and the editor
| would helpfully point out that in Spain they just call the
| dish Rice. Also, it's just fun to make puns sometimes.
|
| A similar joke:
|
| Batman and Robin are in hot pursuit of the Joker when they
| hop in the Batmobile. Unfortunately it fails to start so
| Batman tells Robin that he is going pull out the Batskates
| and continue to chase the Joker. In the meantime he tells
| Robin to check the battery. Robin agrees but after a moment
| pauses to ask "What's a 'Tery'?"
| xenospn wrote:
| Thy probably teach this in ropology class.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| this is an iquate joke
| withants wrote:
| with ants
| duluca wrote:
| Came here for this as soon as I read the headline. Satisfied!
| bch wrote:
| Thanks ants. Thants.
| Razengan wrote:
| What is HN coming to
| ozfive wrote:
| Dang does an amazing job of moderating but I am sure it's
| near impossible to keep up at this point. At least the overly
| political article submissions aren't making it through. I've
| been reprimanded and have learned the error of my ways in
| comments. Sometimes people just need the reminder. No matter
| what you are going through in life it's not ok to take it out
| on others.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I also assumed the same, so I looked back in time. If you
| read some of the early HN posts, the quality, length, variety
| is the same as is now. (length seems longer now).
|
| There's even a bunch of "what did this site become" comments
| from way back too!
|
| I think it's we who change, we mature, grow older, more
| grumpy or less grumpy.
| whutsurnaym wrote:
| And if that doesn't work, their immune systems fight off
| infection using "ibodies"
| 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.
| 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...
| Nick87633 wrote:
| Mirror test of LLMs might be an interesting experiment to
| design!
| klyrs wrote:
| What _is_ an LLM? Is it the trained weights? The source
| code? The frontend? Where do you even hold the mirror?
| speed_spread wrote:
| You get it to talk with itself.
| datameta wrote:
| Wait, I think that might recursively turn into the
| singularity. So we can do it now, but around GPT-6.5 or
| LLaMa 5, unless this transformer-based explosion maxes
| out our silicon circuit tech by then, be careful.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I call dibs on this new concept of singularity-as-a-
| service.
| Kalabasa wrote:
| Yeah, wouldn't the "test" be essentially letting it
| generate tokens forever, without user-written prompts.
|
| Since an LLM has no sense of self or instances, what does
| it mean for it to talk to itself?
|
| In a way, doesn't it already "talk to itself" when
| generating sentences, e.g., its output token gets added
| to the input tokens successively?
| ben_w wrote:
| > Since an LLM has no sense of self or instances
|
| While I'd be surprised to learn they have anything a
| normal person would call a sense of self, it would only
| be mild surprise and even then mainly because it means we
| finally have a testable definition. (Amongst other
| things, I don't buy that the mirror test is a good test,
| but rather I think it's an OK first attempt at a test).
|
| We're really bad at this.
|
| > In a way, doesn't it already "talk to itself" when
| generating sentences, e.g., its output token gets added
| to the input tokens successively?
|
| I'm not sure if that counts as talking to itself or not;
| I think that I tend to form complete ideas first and then
| turn them into words which I may edit afterwards, but is
| that editing process "talking to myself"?
|
| And this might well be one kind of "sense of self".
| Possibly.
| klyrs wrote:
| > In a way, doesn't it already "talk to itself" when
| generating sentences, e.g., its output token gets added
| to the input tokens successively?
|
| If this is the basis of a mirror test, most AI
| recognition attempts have pretty high failure rates, so
| I'd say they currently fail. But if we presented a
| similar test to a human, "did you write this?" it seems
| to fall short of a mirror test because it can be
| falsified by an otherwise unintelligent algorithm which
| remembers its previous output.
| waffleiron wrote:
| The mirror test would be less interesting if we could
| program/teach animals to pass or fail it. So I wouldn't
| be impressed if a LLM is able to pass these types of
| tests.
| justinl33 wrote:
| Probably wouldn't be very enlightening.. there's no
| baseline sentience to base any claims of 'self awareness'
| off of.
| largbae wrote:
| We can have ChatGPT talk to itself by simply opening two
| chats and pasting back and forth. But the LLM can't win:
| if it notices then it will be called "wrong" because it
| is talking to another instance of itself. If it does not
| notice then it is "wrong" because it failed to notice.
| ben_w wrote:
| With perfect duplication it's hard to tell; I imagine
| that if we had a magic/sci-fi duplication device that
| worked on people, and a setup that resolved the chirality
| problem, the subjects would have similar difficulties.
| pcrh wrote:
| Indeed it would! Is anyone here going to try to do that?
|
| As an observer is needed to assess the LLM, perhaps the
| easiest test is copy-paste between two instances and then
| ask chatGPT, or whichever LLM, "who were you talking
| to?".
| Someone wrote:
| You can't use two instances. They both would have
| individual selfs.
|
| I think an experiment would be to feed back whatever a
| LLM says to that same LLM, and see whether they'll, at
| some time, say "why are you doing that to me?"
| isaacfung wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/18qhcst/yooo_gp
| t4_...
| ahoka wrote:
| They probably can't and the paper claiming it might be
| bogus, unfortunately.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Damn, I admit I didn't read the paper, and it's too late
| to edit my comment, sorry :(
| 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.
| datameta wrote:
| That's an obscene cognition/cooperation to body weight
| ratio.
| eigenket wrote:
| I would guess(without much evidence) that you don't need
| much cognition in each individual ant. You can get very
| complex behaviours out of very simple rules in idealised
| systems like cellular automata.
|
| My bias (for essentially aesthetic reasons) is to assume
| that each ant is basically pretty dumb, and the cool
| complex behaviors happen as an emergent property of how
| they respond to the stimuli they recieve (especially all
| the pheromone messages they get from other ants).
| datameta wrote:
| I have a similar hunch. They seem to be a distributed
| sensor, compute, and actuator network.
| SCM-Enthusiast wrote:
| >each ant is basically pretty dumb, and the cool complex
| behaviors happen as an emergent property of how they
| respond to the stimuli they recieve (especially all the
| pheromone messages they get from other ants).
|
| Can't ants be swapped out as humans here?
| 20after4 wrote:
| They farm MY crops. Little bastards. >D
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There was an episode of Cosmos[0], where Neil deGrasse Tyson
| talks about bees, and shows how they are actually a hive
| intelligence that could be compared to us.
|
| Ants have a similar hivemind.
|
| It was pretty awesome.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI
| shiroiuma wrote:
| The ants already sound much smarter than humans.
|
| Ants: use antibiotics to treat wounds
|
| Human: I'm not using that! It has microchips from Bill
| Gates in it!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, it helps that ants don't question their overlords.
| bouvin wrote:
| The real beauty is that ants do not have overlords -
| their intelligent behaviour is emergent, not centrally
| controlled.
| datadeft wrote:
| Yep it is kind of surprising:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony#Colony_structure
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ants don't rebel against the ways of their society, each
| ant knows their place and doesn't have aspirations to be
| something else, other than what it was predestined to be
| at birth.
|
| I guess there are a couple of movies about that. :)
| ssener2001 wrote:
| tiny animals like ants cannot know order and balance .
| They are like tiny robots. By carrying out duties far
| exceeding its own power, everything testifies to the All-
| Powerful One's existence
|
| "Yes, the All-Wise Creator summarizes the principles of
| the Clear Book in most beautiful form and abbreviated
| fashion and with a particular pleasure and through a
| special need, and includes them in beings. If everything
| acts thus with a particular pleasure out of a particular
| need, it unknowingly conforms to the principles of the
| Clear Book." Quran's Light
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Ants don't have overlords. From the standpoint of
| genetics, one ant colony is a single organism. The queen
| mates only once in her life, before starting a colony.
| All the subsequent individual ants are from the genetic
| material of that foundational mating.
|
| When ants from different colonies meet (with different
| genetics lineages) they fight wars of total annihilation.
| Ant colonies do not cooperate.
| eigenket wrote:
| This is a bit simplistic, especially the last paragraph.
| There are quite a lot of examples of ants which aren't
| particularly related to each other cooperating [1].
|
| Probably the most common example is that colonies which
| have been around for a while and are stable often adopt
| new queens that turn up from outside. Then multiple
| queens are producing workers and you get a colony made of
| many distinct "families".
|
| There are even examples of nests consisting of ants from
| different species. Quoting from the article I referenced
| earlier
|
| > Ants engaged in parabiotic associations cooperate in a
| variety of ways including shared nest defense,
| trophallaxis, and communal use of trail pheromones. For
| example, "ant gardens" in the Neotropics (Davidson, 1988;
| Orivel et al., 1997) and in Asian rainforests (Kaufmann
| and Maschwitz, 2006; Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010) are often
| co-inhabited by species from the genera Crematogaster and
| Camponotus (along with a number of other genera) ....
| While brood chambers are kept separate, the rest of the
| colonies mix freely within the joint nest. In addition to
| sharing foraging trails to plant-based resources (Menzel
| et al., 2010), both species will defend the nest although
| larger Camponotus tend to exhibit the majority of the
| defensive behaviors (Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010).
|
| [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.202
| 1.73675...
| pharrington wrote:
| Ants have been doing the whole "advanced civilization" before
| long before humans even evolved. There's a ton of stuff we
| still have to learn about, and from, them.
|
| edit - didn't see eigenket's comment basically saying the
| same thing
| sillywalk wrote:
| > Ants farm aphids
|
| and also fungus
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants-
| becam...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/why-leafcutter-
| ants-...
| BelleOfTheBall wrote:
| I'm amused that people call ants doing pretty human
| behavioral quirks "scary". Obviously the implication is that
| they're smarter than we knew, but I'm giggling imagining some
| other species going "Have you seen what humans can do?" and
| then just describing the beef industry, Boston Dynamics robot
| dogs or Facebook.
| kombookcha wrote:
| Hey, two out of those three things are kinda scary!
| janosdebugs wrote:
| Two?
| 20after4 wrote:
| Yeah I was wondering which one of those gets a pass. All
| three are terrifying IMO.
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| most definitely not the botson dynamics robot dogs,
| that's wayy too DARPA to be not scary as hell
| 867-5309 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)
| 20after4 wrote:
| Humans are absolutely terrifying. The most scary and
| dangerous of all creatures. I'm sure humans kill far more
| than any other animal. Perhaps only bacteria and viruses
| exceed the level of scary that humans have attained.
|
| But ants are pretty damn close to human levels of scary,
| IMO. Look up the acid spitting crazy ants and tell me
| that's not a little bit scary.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| Mosquitoes kill more than any other animal. Specifically
| a parasite inside the mosquito that causes malaria.
| eigenket wrote:
| According to some quick googling I just did malaria kills
| around 600-700 thousand people per year, while in 2016
| road traffic accidents killed around 1.3 million (both
| numbers attributed to the World Health Organisation).
|
| Assuming that a majority of the road traffic deaths are
| attributable to humans then humans seem to very easily
| beat mosquitos/malaria at killing other humans.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| If you start in 2016 your data is correct. If you start
| from 4000BCE I believe the largest human killer ever is
| malaria.
| eigenket wrote:
| You may be correct, I'm not sure. Apparently about half
| of humans ever have lived in the last 2000 years, and the
| death rate for those in the earlier half (before 2000
| years ago) was overwhelming dominated by very high child
| mortality. I guess the answer probably depends on what
| proportion of those infant deaths were due to malaria.
| try_the_bass wrote:
| The fact that humans have surpassed what historically was
| the #1 killer is honestly the more scary part. For all
| parts of that dynamic
| ycombinete wrote:
| I would love to see a timelapse of them harvesting the
| sunflowers, that is absolutely incredible.
| eurekin wrote:
| I'm especially surprised a tiny milligram worth of brain is
| able to provide such high level functions and coordination.
| I'd normally expect all those neurons would be occupied fully
| with processing visual stimuli, smells and coordination limb
| movement alone.
| eigenket wrote:
| I guess just hard to tell how much of that is attributable
| to cognition inside the brain of each ant, and how much is
| network effects with each ant responding in individually
| stupid ways to the pheromone (and other) signals they
| create.
|
| Each ant could be very dumb while the system of ants as a
| whole are quite "smart" (I.e. exhibit complex and
| interesting behaviours).
| eurekin wrote:
| How is learning performed than? By means of genetic
| evolution - on the level of a individual or the whole
| colony (queens mutations)?
| eigenket wrote:
| I guess it happens on multiple levels. No reason it would
| be exclusive to one.
|
| Certainly individual ants learn stuff
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.19077
| 8
|
| But adaptions also happen by evolution and (very
| speculatively) might also happen at the colony level by
| it changing its responses somehow. E.g. I could imagine
| an ant colony suddenly faced with many attackers adapting
| by breeding more soldiers.
| luqtas wrote:
| they also have a really organized division of labor, like
| "some wait at the nest for some days, then after the ones who
| went out get tired, the resting ones assume their positions
| etc."
|
| https://antsauthority.com :D
| 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.
| Voultapher wrote:
| One could call it a human suprematist mindset.
| SCM-Enthusiast wrote:
| or anty-human.
| atticora wrote:
| > That's insanely impressive and almost scary level of
| adaptation
|
| I fully agree while thinking the same thing about our immune
| system behavior. The insanely scary impressive thing is that
| this level of adaptation is the rule not the anomaly in
| biological systems.
| janandonly wrote:
| I'm surprised I don't have nightmares from his book with the
| planner filled with ants that are elevated to intelligence
| JoBrad wrote:
| I think the ants are still used as mostly dumb workers.
| SCM-Enthusiast wrote:
| with fire!
| kromem wrote:
| They also seem to pass the mirror test:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9881685/#:~:tex...
| .
| kromem wrote:
| Link to the PDF of the research itself for those interested:
|
| https://www.journalofscience.net/showpdf/MjY4a2FsYWkxNDc4NTI.
| ..
| 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....
| soperj wrote:
| Gotta wonder what the other 56 components do, and if we're
| using them for anything?
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| A wound for ants
| justinl33 wrote:
| conspecific: _a member of the same species._
| boznz wrote:
| I am in a constant battle with ants in my kitchen, they are
| tenacious little buggers and the only way that really works is to
| keep the kitchen immaculately clean!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Plot twist: ants just aesthetically prefer tidiness and so
| engineered your behavior to ensure a clean kitchen.
| ace2358 wrote:
| Would read that sci-fi
| jxy wrote:
| Now that I think of this, they probably hired mice and
| cockroaches, too.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Subcontracting work is the true sign of an intelligent
| species.
| coding123 wrote:
| Best way is to kill them and not clean up the bodies. They
| smell like mint usually. Keeps them away
| powersnail wrote:
| My experience with ants (at least with common small black
| ants) is that they tend to eventually remove the dead body
| after some poking around, rather than keep away from the
| crime scene.
| qiqitori wrote:
| I've had excellent results with ant bait containing
| hydramethylnon. Just placed a couple bait containers in the
| room I had them; they were gone the next day and it's been
| almost three years.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I live in an area where Monomorium pharaonis is an invasive
| species, and there are many fruit trees in our city (mostly
| varieties of cherry and plum).
|
| Leave this Mixture in a shallow lid/dish next to the Ant entry
| point:
|
| 1 part borax dish soap
|
| 3 parts granulated sugar
|
| 15 parts warm water
|
| They will ingest the mixture, and return the payload to the
| colony if dilute enough. A few days later the slow poison
| should start to knock out the group.
|
| Indeed, once a path is chemically marked it is very hard to
| keep ants out, and failure to remove a waste bin lures them in
| again.
|
| Mixing kiln dried diatomaceous earth with water for treating
| the surrounding external structure also helps knock down
| anything with a chitin exoskeleton. It can be effective if a
| colony has attached to a tunnel system.
|
| Best of luck =)
| progman32 wrote:
| Three other options (admittedly less effective, but the
| upside is no killing).
|
| 1. Give them what they want. I have a bottle of cheap corn
| syrup I use as a truce offering. If I start getting scouts or
| the beginnings of an incursion I just dump a big glob of the
| syrup right next to their nest outside. Everyone disappears
| from my house within a half hour. Usually, they forget about
| the kitchen for a couple weeks. Then I repeat.
|
| 2. Peppermint oil. The ants here will avoid it. If I smear it
| across an active ant line it interrupts it even.
|
| 3. Ant moat. Works great for sugar products and pet dishes. I
| use 4 shot glasses full of soapy water holding up a small
| kitchen rack. The rack is perched on 4 small submerged
| pillars I added to the rack's feet.
|
| Edit: of course an invasive species needs to be dealt with in
| accordance to the threat to the local ecosystem. I'm just
| providing options for simple nuisance ants.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| "1. Give them what they want."
|
| Not a great idea, as people can skew the ecosystem into
| causing more harm. More ants can increase Aphid populations
| that spread viral plant diseases (see Huanglongbing or
| citrus greening disease).
|
| "2. Peppermint oil."
|
| Never tried this one, but seems expensive. Also, most mint
| products are illegal to import in some areas, given it can
| carry symbiotic fungus spores that may decimate food crops.
|
| "3. Ant moat. "
|
| Many species have building skills, and some will even build
| tiny twig/gravel roads/bridges over dangerous/irritating
| substances.
|
| They are fascinating little creatures, and an important
| part of the ecosystem. =)
| throwanem wrote:
| > once a path is chemically marked it is very hard to keep
| ants out
|
| Nonsense. A wipe with plain white vinegar suffices to
| dissolve the pheromone trail, and seems to deter foragers for
| some while after.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I can totally see people removing concrete slabs, laminated
| floors, window drip drains, and exhaust vents inside walls.
| The ants won't understand human idealism, but most aphids
| and fruit flies sure love vinegar smells. =)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| > only way that really works is to keep the kitchen
| immaculately clean
|
| Prevention better than cure, as always :-).
| lukas099 wrote:
| They're helping you find spots you missed.
| powersnail wrote:
| Sadly that's not always effective. My house is immaculately
| clean, no food residue for ants to find, but they still
| come......for water!
|
| They get into toilet tank, cat's water bowl, flower vase, my
| cup, looking for nothing but water. Not once had I seen them
| moving any sort of food in my house, (they also doesn't seem to
| be interested in cat food), but they always manage to find
| water. I wonder how they manage such a low calorie diet.
|
| It took quite a bit of effort to caulk every one of their
| entrance; which seems to be the most effective measure so far.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Leave a water bowl outside for them maybe?
| powersnail wrote:
| I'm on the 3rd floor. They come from the walls. There's
| nowhere to place a sacrifice.
| nickjj wrote:
| I watched a video once on YouTube about ants and there was a
| section where they encountered termites and had an all out
| battle.
|
| The termite warriors would literally bite off the ant's limbs in
| 1 quick bite.
|
| They mentioned the antibiotics allowed ants to resume basic
| functionality within a day. Imagine losing your arm at 9am and
| then still be useful by 3pm with no more than a few seconds or a
| minute of someone giving you antibiotics. We're not talking about
| regeneration here, but walking around and acting as normal as you
| can be given your missing limb(s).
| judge2020 wrote:
| > We're not talking about regeneration here
|
| That's reserved for the Axolotl
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration
| ericpruitt wrote:
| > I watched a video once on YouTube about ants and there was a
| section where they encountered termites and had an all out
| battle.
|
| Do you have a link?
| jprete wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megaponera+anal.
| ..
|
| The top one ("Megaponera analis - termite predators of the
| african savannah") was decent although the accent was hard
| for me to understand. It's definitely not the video the GP
| referenced, though, because the narrator doesn't mention the
| wound treatment or antibiotics, just that the injured ants
| are carried home.
| nickjj wrote:
| > Do you have a link?
|
| Unfortunately no. It was probably about a year ago and
| searching around for "ants" videos isn't coming up with
| anything. I've noticed that after a while YouTube will remove
| the red border to indicate you've watched a video.
|
| I can say for sure it wasn't a Kurzgesagt video, but they
| have a number of videos about ants. I haven't seen all of
| them but their videos are usually high quality:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kurzgesagt+ants
|
| The video I'm thinking about had pretty big black "warrior"
| ants scout out an area and engage with termites, I'm not sure
| of their species. Based on my memory it felt like a
| documentary style video. It was all live captured video with
| a narrator, not an animation.
|
| To be honest I'm not super into ants. It was one of those
| videos that somehow landed in my feed and I was pleasantly
| surprised because I like learning about new things.
| gverrilla wrote:
| You can try looking in your youtube History
| buryat wrote:
| i found a video of a standoff between termites and ants even
| more impressive: https://youtu.be/C96w-7B2W8I
| ozfive wrote:
| I turned the volume up expecting to hear war drums at
| least. I've seen this video before. Makes me think of
| police and mafia.
| nixass wrote:
| Check "Life on our planet" on Netflix. It's about dinosaurs
| but also has plenty of bits around evolution. In one episode
| they talk about ants vs termites and also focus on that
| particular bit (limbs getting damaged or ripped off)
|
| https://www.netflix.com/title/80213846?preventIntent=true
|
| Also, visually very impressive documentary
| nickjj wrote:
| Haha, you know what. This must be where I saw it because I
| went ~6 months back in my YouTube history and CTRL+F'd for
| ants and saw nothing except a documentary about fire ants
| which didn't cover this topic.
|
| What a horrible assumption I made thinking I saw this about
| a year ago, I got tricked into thinking it must have been a
| long time ago since my YouTube history was coming up empty.
| I did watch life on our planet shortly after it was
| available. This is one of the pitfalls of watching lots of
| media on different platforms, it all blends together. I
| watch a lot of documentaries on both platforms.
| nixass wrote:
| I have that problem too. Not only with video but
| information consumption in general. Things I believed I
| read 18 months ago happened only 4-5 months back max.
| Crazy what overconsumption of information does to us
| sva_ wrote:
| Consider crabs amputating their own limbs
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v241TF-cSzU
| gumby wrote:
| Humans do it too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aron_Ralston
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is different. Crabs or Spiders can regrow a limb amputated,
| but adult insects can't.
| spike021 wrote:
| I'm sure it's unrelated but this reminds me of my dog. If I ever
| have a paper cut or like dry skin on my hands from eczema, as
| soon as he sniffs the cut or damaged skin he tries to keep
| licking them like he's... cleaning them out or something? He's my
| first dog so I haven't really looked into why dogs do that.
|
| Of course I wash my hands with soap very well after he does that
| since he obviously has many germs.
|
| Just find that very interesting.
| tiltowait wrote:
| Yep, that's why dogs do that. The term "licking your wounds"
| comes from that behavior (which many animals do).
| sva_ wrote:
| Wolves do that as well.
| shiroiuma wrote:
| >If I ever have a paper cut or like dry skin on my hands from
| eczema, as soon as he sniffs the cut or damaged skin he tries
| to keep licking them like he's... cleaning them out or
| something? He's my first dog so I haven't really looked into
| why dogs do that.
|
| If it were an injury on the dog, it's very helpful for
| preventing infection.
|
| However, because it's on _you_ , it's a good way for you to get
| an infection and need your limbs amputated.
|
| https://people.com/human-interest/man-who-lost-arms-legs-nos...
| spike021 wrote:
| Yeah, like I said, I wash very well after! Also I wouldn't
| let him do it on a deep cut/laceration. it's just like
| cracked skin and whatnot at worst.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Saliva can clean the wound and contains anti microbial agents
| and white blood cells.
| Madmallard wrote:
| distributed cognition is a really bizarre thing that we need to
| learn more about
|
| turns out problem solving and intelligence don't have to be
| localized at all and even not having them localized doesn't
| necessarily hinder the ability for it to handle complex problems
| either
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| How is a self-created antibiotic different from a T-cell or
| antibody?
| melagonster wrote:
| T-cell is a type of cell. they can move and work. antibodies
| are small proteins generated by cell. usually, antibodies
| binding to something and help immune system work. antibiotics
| are some molecules we can add it into our body and only kill
| pathogens.
|
| so they are different terms. in another way, if the molecules
| will be used as drug, it probably call antibiotic.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Antibiotics are just simple chemicals that kill bacteria - with
| the caveat that they preferably don't also kill the patient.
| sethbannon wrote:
| Amazing. Also neat that we may actually learn to treat human
| infections better after this discovery.
|
| "Erik Frank. Laurent Keller also adds that these findings 'have
| medical implications because the primary pathogen in ant's
| wounds, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is also a leading cause of
| infection in humans, with several strains being resistant to
| antibiotics'."
|
| Love imagining leading scientists from big pharma rushing to
| investigate the compound cocktails ants are using to make the
| next blockbuster drug.
| danielheath wrote:
| And here I thought their anty bodies were enough to fight
| disease.
| Xeamek wrote:
| What?
| leosanchez wrote:
| Antibody
| burrish wrote:
| ant-y-body
| HaZeust wrote:
| Nice.
| vibrio wrote:
| This is a pedantic note, but in general Pharma does not care
| about antibiotics drug development - It's an economic desert.
| If it was a cancer or serious rare disease drug, they'd be
| grinding up buckets of ants yesterday.
| RmTheGame wrote:
| Well rare disease is also an economic desert. Its only
| because of Government regulation big pharma started to care
| about these.
|
| Mainly the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 with provided tax
| incentives as well as subsidized research. There is also the
| Rare Disease act of 2002 but that IMO is less signifigant.
|
| Don't forget that for rare diseases affecting children the
| government awards fast track vouchers. These allow you to
| shorten the approval time of another drug (or sell it for a
| few hundred million for another company to do the same.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Drug_Act_of_1983
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Diseases_Act_of_2002
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_review
| vibrio wrote:
| I totally agree. Although I'm not sure similar vouchers for
| antibiotics would be sufficient for the same success, as
| there are also logistical, financial and scientific
| advantages that have enabled rare disease drug development.
| Many rare disease being targeted are monogenic, providing a
| very 'clean' scientific mechanism, and higher success
| rates. The clinical studies can be small well defined
| population as pre/neonatal genetic testing is now routine,
| and supportive Foundations are often instrumental.
| Financially, insurers/payers have been amenable to huge
| per-patient prices in rare diseases because of low volume
| and often impressive efficacy.
|
| Developing antibiotics has lower technical success rates.
| The medical need is more acute and distributed across more
| broad populations with much of them poor making patients
| 'harder to find'. Any novel antibiotic are typicaly held in
| reserve until after generation of resistance to all the
| current drugs, limiting volume. Commonly, physician and
| patient over-/mis-usage of antibiotics generates
| resistance, generating a limited 'valuable' life span of
| the drug.
|
| There are many governmental/regulatory incentives being
| developed, and at least one industry-backed fund (AMR
| action fund) supporting early research but it's still a
| challenge to build business plans for this.
| axsl wrote:
| super interesting!
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I hope those ants have a valid government approved doctor's
| prescription for that
| rvba wrote:
| What will happen?
|
| Some pharma company will vopy the antibiotic.
|
| Farmers will give it like candy to animals and in third world
| countries they will dump it to rivers.
|
| Bacterias get resistant. So the antibiotic becomes useless for
| humans and then ants stsrt to die off.
| whycome wrote:
| Ants are like a real-life machine learning model.
| shostack wrote:
| Read Children of Time and have your mind blown.
| whycome wrote:
| Thanks for the rec! That seems right up my alley!
|
| Re: ants. A quick google suggests there could be around
| twenty quadrillion ants on earth. With such volume, they
| could literally "learn" through pure trial and error like a
| machine learning model.
| kaitocross wrote:
| Does that mean that Ants have a better healthcare system than the
| USA?
| bantunes wrote:
| Pretty low bar to clear, isn't it?
| melagonster wrote:
| To be frank, providing free treatment for limb fractures is
| quite demanding in terms of standards
| treprinum wrote:
| "With the exception of humans, I know of no other living creature
| that can carry out such sophisticated medical wound treatments,"
| - aren't cats/dogs doing the same by licking their wounds,
| applying ample amounts of lactoferrin that is a potent
| antibacterial/antiviral substance?
| baz00 wrote:
| Well if it's like my cat, it licked its butt beforehand and
| cost me vet bills a couple of times so YMMV.
| treme wrote:
| and we only learned to wash hands 130 years ago
| rq1 wrote:
| I hope ants won't end up copyrighted.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| Time to stop preaching about eating insects, and start offering
| them equal rights! I, for one, will not participate in the insect
| holocaust, and will embrace their mesosoma in friendship.
| SCM-Enthusiast wrote:
| >They take these antibiotics from the metapleural gland
|
| The fact that a gland could arise through natural selection makes
| over 112 different components from anti-biotics to chemicals
| blows my mind.
|
| The underlying theory that "random mutation" and errors in the
| copying of ant DNA created a secretion sac is crazy to me. I
| imagine this first ant was like the "Mule" in foundation, where
| he could introduce chemicals to "Control and conquer". There
| seems to be some underlying learning mechanism built within
| "Random mutation".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-04 23:02 UTC)