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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Brian Stout, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Jerry Falwell Jr., Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Ant performing Amputation on its’ injured fellow ant
Ants Helping Ants
With political drama, a missed assignation attempt, a republican crazy nominated to be the number one crazy’s running mate, people attacking Biden for having a bad debate night and the Democratic Party eating their own. Which only enables Trumps chances to win the election. I decided to focus on ants this week. Scientists have discovered that ants perform lifesaving surgeries on injured ants. They are only the second animal in the world known to do this, along with humans. The researchers found that Florida carpenter ants identify limb wounds on their nest mates, then treat them with either cleaning or amputation. This is literally the only case in which a sophisticated and systematic amputation of an individual by another member of its species occurs in the animal kingdom. In 2023, Frank's team discovered that an African ant species, Megaponera analis, can treat infected wounds in their fellow ants with an antimicrobial substance produced in their glands. Florida carpenter ants do not have any equivalent glands, so the team wanted to find out how this species handles wounds in members of the colony. the researchers looked at two types of leg wounds: lacerations on the femur (thigh) and those lower down on the tibia. the ants treated their fellow ants' femur injuries by cleaning the wound with their mouths before amputating the leg by repeatedly biting it, while the tibia wounds were treated with just cleaning. The surgeries resulted in significant improvements in the survival of their ant patients. Survival rates for femur injuries improved from less than 40% to between 90 and 95% when amputations were performed, while survival rates for tibia injuries improved from 15% to 75% following cleaning. The scientists suggest ants only amputate femur injuries, rather than all leg injuries, because of speed limitations. An amputation takes ants at least 40 minutes to complete. After studying micro-CT scans of the ants, the researchers speculated that the damage to blood-pumping muscles in the femur causes blood circulation to slow. This would mean that bacteria-laden blood would take longer to enter the body, allowing the ants enough time to amputate the limb. Ant tibias, meanwhile, have relatively little muscle tissue, so infections can spread faster. This means amputation would take too long for the ants to stop the spread of harmful bacteria, so they instead focus on cleaning the wound. Scientists are now studying other ants to see if they too are able to care for their wounded brethren. Who would have thought that a mere ant would be capable of performing a surgery. And those ants with a leg gone still performed ant jobs in the nest.
Tammy
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