In nature, the survival instinct It is usually the absolute norm: any living being fights to stay alive until the last second. However, in the world of social insects the rules change radically, as happens with ants, which When they get sick they actively ask to be euthanized so as not to condemn the rest of his colony. As if it were some kind of euthanasia.
The smell of death. Until now, it was known that sick animals in groups often hid their symptoms to avoid being excluded or attacked by someone more powerful in the herd. But in ant colonies, where everyone is closely related, the logic is completely reversed.
According to a published study in Nature and after analyzing invasive garden ants, it has been seen that ant pupae infected by pathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum They do not passively wait to die. On the contrary, when the infection is fatal and they know there is no other remedy, they modify their body chemistry to alert the workers.
Something complex. Although they do not speak (or at least we do not understand them) ants have a communication system between them. In this case they do it through chemical signals based on cutillary hydrocarbonswhich we could say is a smell that the ant gives off. In this way, by activating a series of reactions when they see that their death is near, a greater amount of this hydrocarbon ends up being generated, which results in a warning to the rest of the ants warning “I am a biological threat.”
A ‘kill me’ warning. Upon detecting this signal, the worker ants do not attempt to cure the pupa. The answer is destructive unpacking and disinfection: they remove the pupa from its cocoon prematurely, bite it, and inject it with acid (poison) to kill it and sterilize the fungus before it can sporular and infect the entire colony.
In this way, we are seeing that ants are true heroes because they sacrifice their lives thinking about the entire colony.
There is one exception. Death with this system is something that has been seen exclusively in worker pupae. By this we mean that those pupae that are predestined to become future queens do not emit these death signals, even when they are infected. So… Is this an act of real selfishness? The answer seems no.
The immunological analysis revealed that queen pupae They have a basal immune system that is 35% more powerful than that of workers. While the workers succumb to the replication of the fungus, the queens are able to contain the infection on their own and that is why they are not a threat to the entire group of ants and therefore do not need to ask for sacrifice.
New evidence. This discovery reinforces a fascinating theory in biology: social immunity. In the same way that the cells in your body have mechanisms to self-destruct with apoptosis if they become cancerous or infected by a virus to save the entire organism, individual ants act as cells of a larger body.
The study concludes that this sacrifice is not an act of submission, but rather a finely tuned evolutionary adaptation. The chemical signal does not simply indicate “I am sick” (which could lead to an attempt at a cure), but rather it indicates “I have failed to overcome the infection and am a danger.”
Images | Prince Patel
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