These Ant Paramedics Save Their Injured Comrades
A species of ant has been discovered to rescue and tend to the battle wounds of other ants injured while hunting, and scientists think that this is the first time this behavior has ever been...
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♪Intro♪ If you’re ever seriously hurt, you can probably go to a hospital and get help. But animals don’t have doctors. If they’re injured, wounds can get infected pretty quickly or mean impending doom. Except… that might not necessarily be true for one species of ant. In a paper published this week, researchers from Germany have discovered that the African Matabele ants tend to each other’s open wounds after vicious battles with termites. And they think it’s the first time a behavior like this has ever been observed in insects. Two to four times every day, Matabele ants hunt termites. A scout ant finds a vulnerable nest of termites and then leads a raiding party back to it. But termites have powerful jaws, called mandibles, so these raids a...
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♪Intro♪ If you’re ever seriously hurt, you can probably go to a hospital and get help. But animals don’t have doctors. If they’re injured, wounds can get infected pretty quickly or mean impending doom. Except… that might not necessarily be true for one species of ant. In a paper published this week, researchers from Germany have discovered that the African Matabele ants tend to each other’s open wounds after vicious battles with termites. And they think it’s the first time a behavior like this has ever been observed in insects. Two to four times every day, Matabele ants hunt termites. A scout ant finds a vulnerable nest of termites and then leads a raiding party back to it. But termites have powerful jaws, called mandibles, so these raids a...
