Ants take medications when sick

FINLAND, AUGUST 22
Those skinny, little anvil-headed creatures, vigorously marching through your floors may be only
half an inch long, but it seems, they holds more than enough wisdom in their tiny little heads.
Recent findings by a team of biologists at the University of Helsinki shows that ants are capable of
diagnosing their illness and taking themselves appropriate counter medications. An article on the
research was later published in the journal Evolution.
The article mentions of a case when ants were infected by Beauveria bassiana, a deadly fungus
that grows on the soil. When ants come in contact with this parasite, it infiltrates upon the ant, later
germinating and penetrating into the bugs skin, and killing the ant within few days. But the infected
ants were often found feeding on hydrogen peroxide honey, which contains a chemical that will
help defend against the invading pathogens.
An interesting fact about hydrogen peroxide is that, it is a toxic compound, very fatal to ants and
likely to cause their death at higher doses. Yet, ants were found opting the toxin rather than risking
the infection.
To get a better insight into the matter, the ants were later studied in a laboratory environment. The
researchers began with checking how fatal the hydrogen peroxide is for ants. One group of ants
were fed with a honey-based solution diet while another group fed on a similar solution spiked with
hydrogen peroxide. It was found that the hydrogen peroxide-laced diet increased the bug mortality
rate by almost 15 percent.
Then, they repeated the same experiment on ants infected with the fungus. This time, the result
was reversed with those fed on hydrogen peroxide having a lesser mortality rate by 15 percent.
This proved that ants natural choice, hydrogen peroxide honey, is in fact an excellent cure.
Finally, the scientists wanted to confirm that the choice was a deliberate one. So they repeated the
experiment, but this time the ants were free to choose between the meal of pure honey solution, or
the meal spiked with hydrogen peroxide. Healthy ants stayed away from the spiked meal, while
infected ants carefully supplemented their diet with doses of the spiked food. They even knew how
much medicine they needed, consuming less meal when the hydrogen peroxide concentration was
increased.
Similar cases of self-medication was discovered with chimpanzees and bumblebees, making the
researchers believe that self-medication is likely to be a widespread phenomenon among the
animal kingdom.