SCIENCE LAB SCENIC : ANT AMPUTATIONS

They get their name from carpenters, but they can act like surgeons, too : The life of a Florida carpenter ant can be brutal. These half-inch ants are territorial and have violent bouts with ants from rival colonies in Southeast.

Combats can leave the ants with leg injuries. But as scientists recently discovered, these ants have evolved an effective wound treatment : amputation.

In the journal Current Biology, researchers report that the ants bite off the injured limbs of their nest mates to prevent infection.

Although other ant species are known to tend to the wounds of their injured, typically by licking them clean, this is the first time that ant species has been known to use amputation to treat an injury.

The ants performed amputations on only certain leg injuries, suggesting that they are methodical in their surgical practices. Aside from humans, no other animal is known to conduct such amputations.

In early 2020, Danny Buffat, a graduate student at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, was observing a colony of Florida carpenter ants in his lab when he noticed one ant was biting off another ant's leg.

His adviser, Erik Frank, now at the University of Wurzburg, didn't believe him at first, but was then shown the video evidence.

They began tracking the amputees' survival rate. Unexpectedly, the ants with amputated limbs survived 90 percent of the time - and the amputations appeared to be consensual.

'' The ant presents its injured leg and calmly sits there while another ant gnaws it off,'' Dr. Frank said. 

'' As soon as the leg drops off, the ant presents the newly amputated wound and the other ant finishes the job by cleaning it.'' [ Annie Roth ]