Nick Bos and his colleagues at the University of Helsinki, Finland have tried to show that ants tend to self-medicate themselves to fight fungal infections. Hydrogen peroxide is a nasty poison but it has been observed that ants self medicate them by eating foods rich in hydrogen peroxide when they suffer from a dangerous fungal disease and this actually increases their chances of survival.

In order to show this, first his team demonstrated that hydrogen peroxide is generally harmful for ants of the Formica fusca species. They fed them one of two diets – either a simple honey-based solution, or this same solution spiked with hydrogen peroxide. It was observed that healthy ants given the spiked diet had a mortality rate of around 20 per cent, compared with around 5 per cent for those who got the harmless solution. But when this same thing was done with ants infected with the fungus Beauveria bassiana, the opposite happened. The death rate of these ants fell from around 60 per cent for those on the ordinary diet to 45 per cent in those given food laced with hydrogen peroxide.

It was also observed that the ants deliberately dosed themselves and that too carefully, when suffering from an infection. When the ants were offered a choice, the healthy ants tended to avoid the spiked food, says Bos. But the infected ants ate more of the solution containing hydrogen peroxide. And when the toxic solution was weak, the infected ants tended to opt for equal amounts of this food and the pure food. Further when a stronger solution was offered, they only fed on it around a quarter of the time.

It is to be noted that hydrogen peroxide is a strong source of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These are chemicals which can harm the body but can also help defend against invading pathogens. Bos and his team presented a possibility that in the wild, these ants might choose to ingest ROS for medicinal purposes by eating aphids or decaying dead ants, both of which can contain these chemicals.

Though the drop in mortality in self medicating ants isn’t that big but it surely makes a difference when we take an ant colony into consideration where there are thousands of such ants constantly working in high humidity and temperatures.

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Author:Technology Blog