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We want our brothers and sisters to be so willing to save us from sneaky predators. New research suggests that the harvester ants of the desert (Veromessor pergandei) Load into webs of spiders to rescue their trapped brothers and sisters and their nesting companions who call for help, sometimes tearing the silk to free them.
Researchers Christina L. Kwapich and Bert Hölldobler have discovered that desert seed collecting ants, observed in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, systematically dismantle spider webs built along foraging routes and recover the sisters clasped in the silk of the spider.
This discovery is surprising because animals that adopt a rescue behavior usually live in small groups with high-value individuals, but Veromessor pergandei are forming huge companies that deploy up to 30,000 browsers every morning.
Recovering trapped siblings is a risky operation: about 6% of rescuers get stuck in silk themselves or were caught by the hidden spider nearby, according to the study published in The American naturalist.
The research team believes that the courage of the rescuers is probably stimulated by the chemical distress signals emitted by their siblings linked by the Internet, because when the scientists brought the ants back to their laboratory, they discovered that these ants were unaware of the empty canvases, Science reported.
Below: Ants do not detect spider webs EXCEPT if a worker is captured and emits a chemical signal from the mandibular gland. Once detected, the ants remove the anchor lines from the canvas and bring the living / dead sisters back to the nest, and remove their silk ties. pic.twitter.com/uGSL3sbb0b
– Christina Kwapich (@Pogonokwap) May 15, 2019
To determine why colonies saved seemingly disposable workers, the study authors calculated the costs and benefits of removing the tapes. They found that seeds carried by ants in search of food entangled in undetected webs, reducing the total number of foraging trips that individuals can make per day, according to an article published by in the American Society of Naturalists.
"Taking into account the length of a foraging career and the number of trips per day, they estimated that uncontrolled predation by spiders could cost the colonies 65,000 seeds per year. This is a high price to pay because the colonies must muster enough resources to raise 600 new sisters every day, "reads the article.
according to ScienceThe results put the harvester ants of the desert in a very small group of animals that adopt a "rescue behavior", usually reserved for mammals such as primates and dolphins. What is even more rare are the species that destroy the traps, limited in vertebrates to two groups of chimpanzees and mountain gorillas that dismantle the traps of poachers.
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