Ant medicine: Ants diagnose and treat injured, something once thought to be uniquely human

Amazing stuff! This is about an older research article, which I was not able to find.

One may notice that war is a common reality among insects too! 

"The Matabele ant (Megaponera analis, formerly known as M. foetens and Pachycondyla analis) is a group-raiding ponerine species (Fig. 1) occurring in most of sub-Saharan Africa. This monotypic genus is most commonly known for its dietary specialization on termites of the subfamily Macrotermitinae. Their conspicuous raiding behavior during foraging and seminomadic lifestyle are considered to be one of the first steps to true legionary behavior, as seen in army ants." (Source)

Perhaps war criminal Putin the Terrible has the brain of a social army ant? Just a wild guess! 😊

"When African Matabele ants (Megaponera analis) go hunting for termites, it’s a pretty gruesome affair. They invade a termite colony, neutralize the soldiers, and then kill the workers — stealing the eggs and nymphs as food. But the termites can fight back and injure or even kill the ants. But the Matabele ants aren’t just excellent soldiers, they’re also great doctors. ...

At some point ... when an ant would get injured, another ant would start licking the wound. He started suspecting that this was done to prevent infections, and maybe even involved an antimicrobial substance being used. So he started following such interactions more closely. ...

ants don’t really give up on their wounded. Instead, when an ant gets wounded (and the wound is not too severe), the injured ant remains calm and secretes pheromones to let its mates know. But when an ant is severely wounded, it starts to move frantically around. Essentially, the ant signals its situation for a diagnosis.

It gets even better: the wounded ants are transported back to a nursery in the nest where their infected wounds are treated. ...
This process of diagnosing and then applying treatment has never been discovered in a non-human species before. ...
The ants apparently produce the disinfectants in a gland in their thorax. This location enables the ants to pick up the wounded in their mouth and suck up the substance (either from itself, with its legs, or even from the injured comrade) and apply it to the injury ..."

Ant medicine: Ants diagnose and treat injured, something once thought to be uniquely human (Unfortunately, this popular science article lacks any reference to the underlying research paper. You can not find the author Erik Frank on Google Scholar, but Google Scholar lists some of his works) The injured ant communicates the problem, and then the "doctors" come in. Some of these techniques have only been seen in humans before.

From the abstract:

"Rescue behavior focused on injured individuals has rarely been observed in animals. These observations though are from very different taxa's: birds, mammals and social insects. Here we discuss likely antecedents to rescue behaviors in ants, like social carrying and alarm pheromones. We then compare similarities and preconditions necessary for rescue behavior focused on injured individuals to evolve across taxa's: a high value of individuals, a high injury risk and social interaction. Ultimately we argue that a similar problem, how to rescue injured group members, has led to different mechanisms to save injured individuals across different taxa."

Here is a similar article from 2017 by author Erik Frank:

Saving the injured: Evolution and mechanisms (open access, very short article)