Ants with ‘Surgical’ Skills to Save Their Kin
Researchers have discovered that Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) can perform amputations and clean wounds to prevent infection. This makes them the second species in the world, after humans, with such capabilities.
Florida carpenter ants can detect injuries in their nestmates and take measures to treat them. They clean or amputate the injured leg. Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany, states: “The act of amputation is a unique, complex, and systematic behavior performed by an individual to save a conspecific in the animal kingdom.”
Previously, in 2023, Frank’s research team found that the African ant Megaponera analis could treat infected wounds of nestmates with antimicrobial compounds secreted from their glands. Since Florida carpenter ants lack such glands, the researchers aimed to understand how these ants handle wounds.
In the study, researchers examined two types of leg wounds: thigh wounds and segments wounds. They observed that carpenter ants treated thigh wounds by cleaning them and then amputating the leg by biting repeatedly, whereas they only cleaned segment wounds. Amputation significantly improved survival rates, with survival for thigh wounds increasing from below 40% to 90-95%, and for segment wounds rising from 15% to 75% after cleaning.
Scientists believe carpenter ants only amputate thigh wounds due to the time required. The amputation process takes at least 40 minutes, and muscle damage in the thigh affects blood circulation, giving ants sufficient time to perform the surgery. In contrast, segment wounds have relatively little muscle tissue, causing infections to spread more quickly, leading ants to focus on cleaning rather than amputation.
Frank explains: “Ants can diagnose the wound, determine if it’s infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly. This is the only healthcare system comparable to humans.”
The ability of ants to recognize and treat wounds appears to be innate, with no evidence of learning. Researchers are now expanding their study to other ant species without antimicrobial glands to explore if they also possess surgical abilities.
