Sometimes, a limb is damaged so badly that the only way to save the patient is to amputate it. Researchers have now found that humans aren’t the only species to perform life-saving amputations. [via Live Science]
While some ants have a gland that secretes antimicrobial chemicals to treat wounds in their comrades, Florida carpenter ants have lost this ability over the course of evolution. Lacking this chemical means to treat wounds, these ants have developed the first observed surgery in an animal other than humans.
When an ant has a wounded leg, its fellow ants analyze the damage. If the femur is the site of the wound, the other ants removed the damaged limb in 76% of cases by biting it off, while tibial wounds were treated in other ways. Experimental amputations of the tibia by researchers showed no difference in survivability compared to leaving the limb intact unless the amputation was performed immediately, so it seems the ants know what they’re doing.
Maybe these ants could be helpful surgical aids with some cyborg additions since they’ve already got experience? Ants can help you with programming too if that’s more your speed.
Do you want ants?!
I for one welcome our insect overlords.
For those of you, like me, that slept through biology class in high school: femur is the upper leg, closer to the body while tibia is lower, below knee.
Insects have 3 segments it seems, the bottom one is called Tarsus it seems.
Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#/media/File:Scheme_ant_worker_anatomy-en.svg
Spiders (and a bunch of other species) can even autotomize damaged legs themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotomy
as plants do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscisic_acid
Biology is wild!
SURGERY — NOT JUST FOR ANTS ANYMORE
chronologicaly speaking.
+1
+1 The title is far too human-centric for my liking. Much like a lot of things in this life :(
Plot twist: You’re an ant who usually posts to HACKADAY to complaint about projects based upon Arduinos, but could have been implemented with a 555 timer chip.
Fair enough!
I watched the video but did not see an actual amputation being performed. I just saw an out of focus video with an ant with a yellow (paint?) dot on it’s back and a damaged leg (probaby mutilated by a human), and another ant fiddling a bit around with it. Maybe it was just inspecting it, or attempting something else.
And with nothing happening in the video, it’s just another exercise of fake news. (At least, it seems so without diving deeper, but I’m not all that interested in ants).
Maybe it realized insurance wouldn’t cover it?
Of course it wouldn’t cover it. Did you every try to get health insurance for an ant?
No but they have made me want to cry uncle
I also saw nothing that matched the article. It looked a lot like what is shown in this vid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LESPHl8rOvI
A little bit later I actually followed the link to the article. It has two video’s One for amputation, and the other for wound care. Hackaday embedded the wrong video here.
Should be fixed now. Thanks!
My ant is a doctor.
Talking of ants, I saw some copper tape on sale against snails and it said it also works againts ants.
Can anybody confirm and explain that one? Because sure it makes sense with snails but why would ants be stopped by copper? And while I’m asking: can that be used as a plotline in an antman movie.