February 14, 2018 by Mariette Le Roux And
Laurence Coustal
African Matabele ants dress the wounds of
comrades injured during hunting raids and nurse them back to health, according
to an "astonishing" discovery reported Wednesday.
After collecting their wounded from the
battlefield and carrying them back home, nestmates become medics, massing
around patients for "intense licking" of open wounds, according to a
study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
This behaviour reduces the fatality rate from about
80 percent of injured soldiers to a mere 10 percent, researchers observed.
The study claimed to be the first to show
such nursing behaviour in any non-human animal.
"This is not conducted through
self-medication, as is known in many animals, but rather through treatment by
nestmates which, through intense licking of the wound, are likely able to
prevent an infection," said study co-author Erik Frank.
He contributed to the research when he was at
the Julius Maximilian University of Wuerzburg in Germany, and continues his
work at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
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