17 ms·
Ants recognise infected wounds and treat them with antibiotics
- treme 3y agoand we only learned to wash hands 130 years ago
- jandrese 3y agoOr as they call them "ibiotics".
- leesec 3y agoNice
- dataflow 3y agoTook me a good minute to figure this out, I kept thinking it was some kind of anti-Apple joke I wasn't understanding.
- jamala1 3y agoIs the joke removing the "ant" prefix?
- dataflow 3y agoYes
- jandrese 3y agoYeah, it's a riff on the old random factoid you used to see all the time in papers and books where someone would be talking about something like Spanish Rice and the editor would helpfully point out that in Spain they just call the dish Rice. Also, it's just fun to make puns sometimes. A similar joke: Batman and Robin are in hot pursuit of the Joker when they hop in the Batmobile. Unfortunately it fails to start so Batman tells Robin that he is going pull out the Batskates and continue to chase the Joker. In the meantime he tells Robin to check the battery. Robin agrees but after a moment pauses to ask "What's a 'Tery'?"
- xenospn 3y agoThy probably teach this in ropology class.
- orliesaurus 3y agothis is an iquate joke
- withants 3y agowith ants
- duluca 3y agoCame here for this as soon as I read the headline. Satisfied!
- bch 3y agoThanks ants. Thants.
- Razengan 3y agoWhat is HN coming to
- ozfive 3y agoDang does an amazing job of moderating but I am sure it's near impossible to keep up at this point. At least the overly political article submissions aren't making it through. I've been reprimanded and have learned the error of my ways in comments. Sometimes people just need the reminder. No matter what you are going through in life it's not ok to take it out on others.
- thinkingemote 3y agoI also assumed the same, so I looked back in time. If you read some of the early HN posts, the quality, length, variety is the same as is now. (length seems longer now). There's even a bunch of "what did this site become" comments from way back too! I think it's we who change, we mature, grow older, more grumpy or less grumpy.
- whutsurnaym 3y agoAnd if that doesn't work, their immune systems fight off infection using "ibodies"
- nerpderp82 3y ago> If the wounds become infected, there is a significant survival risk. However, Matabele ants have developed a sophisticated healthcare system: they can distinguish between non-infected and infected wounds and treat the latter efficiently with antibiotics they produce themselves.
- eigenket 3y agoThat's insanely impressive and almost scary level of adaptation/smart behaviour from the ants. Edit: it feels more like something you'd read from Adrian Czajkowski/Tchaikovsky rather than reality.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago90% reduction in mortality. Wow.
- 20after4 3y agoHave you seen what else ants can do? They are full of insanely impressive/scary/smart behaviors. Ants farm aphids. They don't just find aphids and collect their "honeydew" excretions. They actually bring the aphids to the plants and then tend to them. Ants harvest the sunflower seeds from my sunflowers. Not just some of the seeds. If I leave the flowers even one day past the time to harvest those seeds, the ants get every single seed. They do it by having some ants up on the flower popping out the seeds, and more ants down below collecting them off the ground. That's some incredible coordination. And these are tiny ants, not some big powerful ants. It's mind boggling to think any creature is able to pull it off. I'm honestly surprised they don't have megalithic structures built of huge stones. Though their underground colonies are megalithic in scale compared to the ants. Maybe instead of ancient aliens we should look into ants as the actual builders of the pyramids.
- eigenket 3y agoI've seen and heard a lot of what they can do, but certainly not everything. Pretty sure humanity as a whole is very far from understanding everything ants do and why.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bloopernova 3y agoAnts can pass the mirror test too, which only a very select few mammals/birds have passed. https://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-that-have-passed-the-mirror-test/ https://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-t...
- gwill 3y ago>For treatment, they then apply antimicrobial compounds and proteins to the infected wounds. They take these antibiotics from the metapleural gland, which is located on the side of their thorax. Its secretion contains 112 components, half of which have an antimicrobial or wound-healing effect I was curious about this metapleural gland and found this article on its uses: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21504532/#:~:text=The%20metapleural%20gland%20(MG)%20is,chemical%20properties%20of%20the%20MG https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21504532/#:~:text=The%20meta....
- soperj 3y agoGotta wonder what the other 56 components do, and if we're using them for anything?
- Bluescreenbuddy 3y agoA wound for ants
- justinl33 3y agoconspecific: a member of the same species.
- boznz 3y agoI am in a constant battle with ants in my kitchen, they are tenacious little buggers and the only way that really works is to keep the kitchen immaculately clean!
- ethbr1 3y agoPlot twist: ants just aesthetically prefer tidiness and so engineered your behavior to ensure a clean kitchen.
- coding123 3y agoBest way is to kill them and not clean up the bodies. They smell like mint usually. Keeps them away
- powersnail 3y agoMy experience with ants (at least with common small black ants) is that they tend to eventually remove the dead body after some poking around, rather than keep away from the crime scene.
- qiqitori 3y agoI've had excellent results with ant bait containing hydramethylnon. Just placed a couple bait containers in the room I had them; they were gone the next day and it's been almost three years.
- nickjj 3y agoI watched a video once on YouTube about ants and there was a section where they encountered termites and had an all out battle. The termite warriors would literally bite off the ant's limbs in 1 quick bite. They mentioned the antibiotics allowed ants to resume basic functionality within a day. Imagine losing your arm at 9am and then still be useful by 3pm with no more than a few seconds or a minute of someone giving you antibiotics. We're not talking about regeneration here, but walking around and acting as normal as you can be given your missing limb(s).
- judge2020 3y ago> We're not talking about regeneration here That's reserved for the Axolotl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration
- ericpruitt 3y ago> I watched a video once on YouTube about ants and there was a section where they encountered termites and had an all out battle. Do you have a link?
- jprete 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megaponera+analis https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megaponera+anal... The top one ("Megaponera analis - termite predators of the african savannah") was decent although the accent was hard for me to understand. It's definitely not the video the GP referenced, though, because the narrator doesn't mention the wound treatment or antibiotics, just that the injured ants are carried home.
- nickjj 3y ago> Do you have a link? Unfortunately no. It was probably about a year ago and searching around for "ants" videos isn't coming up with anything. I've noticed that after a while YouTube will remove the red border to indicate you've watched a video. I can say for sure it wasn't a Kurzgesagt video, but they have a number of videos about ants. I haven't seen all of them but their videos are usually high quality: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kurzgesagt+ants https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kurzgesagt+ants The video I'm thinking about had pretty big black "warrior" ants scout out an area and engage with termites, I'm not sure of their species. Based on my memory it felt like a documentary style video. It was all live captured video with a narrator, not an animation. To be honest I'm not super into ants. It was one of those videos that somehow landed in my feed and I was pleasantly surprised because I like learning about new things.
- spike021 3y agoI'm sure it's unrelated but this reminds me of my dog. If I ever have a paper cut or like dry skin on my hands from eczema, as soon as he sniffs the cut or damaged skin he tries to keep licking them like he's... cleaning them out or something? He's my first dog so I haven't really looked into why dogs do that. Of course I wash my hands with soap very well after he does that since he obviously has many germs. Just find that very interesting.
- tiltowait 3y agoYep, that's why dogs do that. The term "licking your wounds" comes from that behavior (which many animals do).
- sva_ 3y agoWolves do that as well.
- shiroiuma 3y ago>If I ever have a paper cut or like dry skin on my hands from eczema, as soon as he sniffs the cut or damaged skin he tries to keep licking them like he's... cleaning them out or something? He's my first dog so I haven't really looked into why dogs do that. If it were an injury on the dog, it's very helpful for preventing infection. However, because it's on you, it's a good way for you to get an infection and need your limbs amputated. https://people.com/human-interest/man-who-lost-arms-legs-nose-after-being-licked-by-dog-wont-give-up-pup/ https://people.com/human-interest/man-who-lost-arms-legs-nos...
- spike021 3y agoYeah, like I said, I wash very well after! Also I wouldn't let him do it on a deep cut/laceration. it's just like cracked skin and whatnot at worst.
- mr_toad 3y agoSaliva can clean the wound and contains anti microbial agents and white blood cells.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- Madmallard 3y agodistributed cognition is a really bizarre thing that we need to learn more about turns out problem solving and intelligence don't have to be localized at all and even not having them localized doesn't necessarily hinder the ability for it to handle complex problems either
- quickthrower2 3y agoHow is a self-created antibiotic different from a T-cell or antibody?
- melagonster 3y agoT-cell is a type of cell. they can move and work. antibodies are small proteins generated by cell. usually, antibodies binding to something and help immune system work. antibiotics are some molecules we can add it into our body and only kill pathogens. so they are different terms. in another way, if the molecules will be used as drug, it probably call antibiotic.
- mr_toad 3y agoAntibiotics are just simple chemicals that kill bacteria - with the caveat that they preferably don’t also kill the patient.
- sethbannon 3y agoAmazing. Also neat that we may actually learn to treat human infections better after this discovery. "Erik Frank. Laurent Keller also adds that these findings 'have medical implications because the primary pathogen in ant’s wounds, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is also a leading cause of infection in humans, with several strains being resistant to antibiotics'." Love imagining leading scientists from big pharma rushing to investigate the compound cocktails ants are using to make the next blockbuster drug.
- danielheath 3y agoAnd here I thought their anty bodies were enough to fight disease.
- Xeamek 3y agoWhat?
- leosanchez 3y agoAntibody
- burrish 3y agoant-y-body
- collyw 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HaZeust 3y agoNice.
- vibrio 3y agoThis is a pedantic note, but in general Pharma does not care about antibiotics drug development - It’s an economic desert. If it was a cancer or serious rare disease drug, they’d be grinding up buckets of ants yesterday.
- axsl 3y agosuper interesting!
- luxuryballs 3y agoI hope those ants have a valid government approved doctor’s prescription for that
- rvba 3y agoWhat will happen? Some pharma company will vopy the antibiotic. Farmers will give it like candy to animals and in third world countries they will dump it to rivers. Bacterias get resistant. So the antibiotic becomes useless for humans and then ants stsrt to die off.
- whycome 3y agoAnts are like a real-life machine learning model.
- shostack 3y agoRead Children of Time and have your mind blown.
- whycome 3y agoThanks for the rec! That seems right up my alley! Re: ants. A quick google suggests there could be around twenty quadrillion ants on earth. With such volume, they could literally "learn" through pure trial and error like a machine learning model.
- kaitocross 3y agoDoes that mean that Ants have a better healthcare system than the USA?
- bantunes 3y agoPretty low bar to clear, isn't it?
- melagonster 3y agoTo be frank, providing free treatment for limb fractures is quite demanding in terms of standards
- treprinum 3y ago"With the exception of humans, I know of no other living creature that can carry out such sophisticated medical wound treatments," - aren't cats/dogs doing the same by licking their wounds, applying ample amounts of lactoferrin that is a potent antibacterial/antiviral substance?
- baz00 3y agoWell if it's like my cat, it licked its butt beforehand and cost me vet bills a couple of times so YMMV.
- rq1 3y agoI hope ants won't end up copyrighted.
- a_gnostic 3y agoTime to stop preaching about eating insects, and start offering them equal rights! I, for one, will not participate in the insect holocaust, and will embrace their mesosoma in friendship.
- SCM-Enthusiast 3y ago>They take these antibiotics from the metapleural gland The fact that a gland could arise through natural selection makes over 112 different components from anti-biotics to chemicals blows my mind. The underlying theory that "random mutation" and errors in the copying of ant DNA created a secretion sac is crazy to me. I imagine this first ant was like the "Mule" in foundation, where he could introduce chemicals to "Control and conquer". There seems to be some underlying learning mechanism built within "Random mutation".
- InSteady 3y agoHeck yeah, evolution is mind-blowing sometimes. Ok, most of the time. However, as a layperson, I often find that things aren't so random and almost unbelievable as they seem at first glance when you start having more context and pieces to fit together. It appears that we have long known that ants, like humans, have microbiomes that produce myriad antimicrobial and antibiotic compounds (and other bioactive molecules) which they are able to make use of. [1] In this paper it sounds like there are other glands that also store and secrete these antimicrobial compounds. So both mechanisms -- antimicrobial compounds from the microbiome and storage/secretion in glands -- most likely existed prior to the development of this specialized metapleural gland. This specific gland is used very frequently in grooming behavior. When they groom themselves, each other, the queen and larva (and even their fungal colonies in the case of leafcutters), they may massage their metaleural gland prior to this grooming to apply antimicrobials/antibiotics and reduce risk of infection. Presumably grooming behavior existed prior to this gland as well, and almost certainly involved secretions from other glands (saliva or the ant equivalent comes to mind), especially to 'clean off' old pheromones as well as crud that would interrupt signaling. So we have pretty much all the ingredients independently for this rather specialized organ + behavior (*this is a narrative constructed via layperson reading and speculation, not in any way intended to be presented as scientific fact). Also, I'm no biologist (let alone evolution/genetics specialist), but what I understand and what makes the most sense to me is that evolution is no longer strictly believed to occur solely on the basis of random mutations. For instance, we have a lot of evidence in very specific cases that epigenetic changes can occur in response to the environment as well as internal processes, and that these changes can be inherited and become a permanent part of the genome by various proposed mechanisms: >There is now good evidence that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous and is involved in adaptive evolution and macroevolution. I argue that the many evolutionary consequences of epigenetic inheritance open up new research areas and require the extension of the evolutionary synthesis beyond the current neo-Darwinian model. The abstract of another paper goes into more detail on how epigenetics may directly and indirectly influence evolution, if you are interested. It's mostly over my head beyond the broad strokes. [3] [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634922/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634922/ [2] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566804/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5566804/ [3] - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0111 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.011...
- rutharcher655 3y ago[dead]
- e3a8 3y agoAnts do other amazing stuff too. E.g. they break seeds into two halves when storing so the seeds don't germinate. They also know that Coriander seeds germinate even when split into two so they split it into four parts.