Curious Kids: How do ants make their own

medicine?
 Posted by The Conversation |
 Monday 15 April 2019, 04:24 PM (EST)

Ants are amazing animals. Even though they have brains smaller than a grain
of sand, they know how to use chemicals in their environment to make
themselves feel better when they are ill.

How ants get sick

If an ant touches the spores (which are like seeds) of a fungus

called Beauveria bassiana the fungus begins to grow inside their bodies.
Soon, they grow very sick.
Ants can cure themselves by drinking small amounts of a chemical that kills
the fungus. The chemical is called hydrogen peroxide.
Hydrogen peroxide is found in two things many ants love to eat: nectar and
honey dew. Nectar comes from flowers and honeydew is a sweet liquid
made by tiny insects called aphids. Ants even like to collect aphids and keep
them in little aphid farms.

Scientists think sick ants in nature sometimes choose to drink nectar or

honeydew that contains higher amounts of hydrogen peroxide.

A science experiment

You might be wondering how scientists found out that ants can cure
themselves by drinking hydrogen peroxide. After all, it is very hard to watch
what happens inside a wild ant nest.

The scientists did a very clever experiment where they gave sick ants and
healthy ants a choice between honey water that contained hydrogen
peroxide and plain honey water.

Sick ants preferred to drink honey water mixed with hydrogen peroxide while
healthy ants preferred to drink plain honey water. Sick ants that drank the
hydrogen peroxide were more likely to get better than those that drank plain
honey water.
This experiment showed that sick ants could choose to eat foods that
contained chemicals that helped them fight off the infection.

Leaf medicine for food fungus

Leafcutter ants are another type of ant that can use medicine to treat
diseases. Leafcutter ants are common in South American jungles, where they
can be seen marching in long lines, carrying leaves over their heads like little
green umbrellas.

The ants do not eat the leaves. Instead, they mash them up into a paste and
use them to feed a special fungus they keep in little gardens. Fungus gardens
are very important to the ant colony as they provide almost all of the
colony’s food.

Sometimes the fungus gardens get sick; when this happens, gardener ants
get rid of the sickness using a special chemical called an “antibiotic”.
Antibiotics work by killing the germs that make animals (including humans)
sick.

Of course, leafcutter ants can’t just walk to the doctor’s office or chemist to
get their antibiotics. Instead, they grow a special type of bacteria on their
bodies. The bacterium makes the antibiotic that cures the fungus when it
gets sick. The friendly, antibiotic-making bacteria are white, so gardener ants
look as though they have been sprinkled with white powder.

Next time you are sick, just think of the ants and their amazing ant-ibiotics!