Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
uni-wuerzburg.de
Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#2we need to mimmick this behaviour in a drone swarm, as well as the reverse, bringing a replacement and reattaching.
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#3Fascinating stuff, I wonder if nature is reusing the "care" neuro-circuitry or if it's some other mechanism. Brood care and fellow care seem to be related by that thread. Would love to see those ants fMRIs at each stage.
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#4> The ants carry out prophylactic amputations. This not only protects the colony from infection but also doubles the survival rate of the injured workers.
To keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too.
Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards.
To let disease run amok in your own neighborhood it would be very costly.
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#5So the colony's "medical staff" are basically the people between jobs who happen to know everyone
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#6> The ants carry out prophylactic amputations. This not only protects the colony from infection but also doubles the survival rate of the injured workers. To keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too. Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards. To let disease run amok in your o…
They can look altruistic at the individual level while still being completely aligned with self-preservation at the group level
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#7> The ants carry out prophylactic amputations. This not only protects the colony from infection but also doubles the survival rate of the injured workers. To keep everybody around you healthy makes the probability of caching a disease lower for yourself, too. Grooming behaviour in primates helps in the same way. And it is so important that it is linked to all kinds of mental rewards. To let disease run amok in your o…
[dead]
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#8I’m surprised they don’t just eject the injured worker from the colony. I wonder if there are specific tasks the amputated ant then goes on to do, or if they resume their former duties at a lower speed.
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#9Fascinating. Hidden on the bottom of the article seems to be a video [1] showcasing how they track each ant out of the six colonies of 110 each.
I'd like to read the paper to skim over the methodology but it's not open-access :(
[1] https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/uniwue/2026/0702Ameis...
Re: Ants: Who looks after the injured in a colony?
#10Surgery, antimicrobials, farming crops, animal husbandry... humans are late to the game.