Following Battles, Ant Medics Treat Their Wounded Comrades

An African ant, Megaponera analis, carries an injured soldier from the battlefield. (Credit: Erik Frank) Ants that hunt termites can risk getting grievously injured in battle, but that doesn't mean its the end of the line. In a newly published study, scientists observed ant medics caring for their wounded comrades, which may be the first scientifically documented example of such medical care in the animal kingdom outside humanity. The African ant Megaponera analis specializes in hunting termites. After scouts of this ant species find termite feeding sites, the scouts lead columns of 200 to 600 fighters back to capture and kill termite prey. "The colony only has between 10 to 20 scouts at a time looking for food, and these scouts make all the important decisions about where to forage and how large the army should be that goes out," said study lead author Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist who carried out this research at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in Germany. "Thus 1 percent of the colony is responsible for the success of the other 99 percent."