It's getting fierce. Can ants also undergo amputation surgery? | Nature Trumpet

Welcome to the 61st issue of the Nature Trumpet column. In the past half month, we have collected the following natural news and research worth reading:

1) Ants perform amputation surgery on injured ants

2) Bats have time maps and plan for the future

3) To protect rhinos, scientists inject them with radioactive substances

4) The Eastern Quoll is a good neighbor and brings new friends to play

5) When a hippopotamus runs, all four of its legs will be in the air

6) The snake, believed to be a male, gave birth to 14 babies

Ant amputation surgery

Ants will actually perform amputation surgery on their companions!

Amputation in progress | Bart Zijlstra

Yes, you read that right. Amputation is no longer a skill unique to humans. A new study found that when a companion's femur is injured, Florida wood ants will use their mouths to clean the wound for the "patient" and then bite off its leg . Such a simple and crude amputation can greatly improve the survival rate of ant patients - if the femur of an ant is not amputated, the survival rate is less than 40%; but after amputation, more than 90% of the ants can survive.

What's even more amazing is that ants can not only perform surgery, but also diagnose wounds and carry out targeted treatment based on the infection of the wound . Before determining the treatment method, ants must first consider the time required for amputation surgery - ants don't have machetes, they can only use their mouths to slowly bite off the legs, and an amputation surgery takes 40 minutes.

Therefore, if the injury is in the femur, where there is more muscle tissue, blood pumping slows down after the injury, and the bacteria infected by the wound will take a long time to enter the body, which is just enough time for amputation. If the injury is in the tibia, where there is less muscle tissue, harmful bacteria will enter the body faster, and the speed of amputation cannot keep up with the speed of bacterial spread. At this time, the ant will not amputate the injured companion, but will quickly clean the infection of the wound, so that the sick ant can survive.

A sick ant and his two "doctors" | Danny Buffat

Bats have a concept of time

Bats have a "time map" in their brains.

A recent study found that bats can not only remember where fruit trees are, but can also predict when each tree will bear fruit; moreover, they can also remember when they last visited the tree.

No one knows fruit trees better than me! | Yuval Barkai

Researchers kept some Egyptian fruit bats in cages for a day. When they were released, they immediately returned to the tree they had visited the day before—the fruit on that tree had not yet been eaten! However, if the bats were kept in cages for a whole week, some experienced bats would avoid trees that had previously borne fruit and had a short fruiting period, because there would be no fruit to eat if they returned. They would instead fly to trees that had a long fruiting period , indicating that they could not only sense how much time had passed, but also knew the different trees very well.

In addition to remembering time and space, bats also plan for the future. Researchers have found that bats have already planned their destinations before leaving the group to forage . They will fly straight to the tree they want to go to, and if the distance is far, they will speed up. Bats that want to eat fruits high in sugar always leave first, while bats that want to eat protein leave later.

Bats go out to eat | Ismail Alí Gago / Wikimedia Commons

This study shows that bats also have complex cognitive abilities. Their daily foraging process is actually similar to that of humans - deciding what they want to eat today (sugar or protein), where the restaurant is (where the fruit tree is), and when the restaurant is open (when the tree bears fruit).

Protecting rhinos with radioactive materials

In order to prevent rhinos from being poached, researchers have come up with a new method - injecting radioactive substances into rhino horns.

Injecting radioisotopes into rhino horns | Julia Evans

In South Africa, researchers sedated 20 rhinos, then drilled holes in their horns and carefully injected low doses of radioactive isotopes. On the one hand, they wanted to use people's fear of radioactive materials to stop poaching; on the other hand, with radioactive isotopes, they could detect the smuggling routes of rhino horns without installing special equipment or training additional personnel - there are more than 11,000 radiation detectors at airports, ports and other ports of entry around the world that can detect radioactive materials.

In the current black market, rhino horns are one of the most valuable commodities. This has led to rampant and cruel poaching. In 2008, nearly 10,000 rhinos died at the hands of poachers in South Africa. However, it is not easy to intercept wildlife smuggling, as many ports of entry are not equipped with relevant instruments and professionals. On the contrary, radiation detectors are available at almost all ports , and they can detect smuggled rhino horns by detecting radioactive substances without any additional investment.

It is one of 20 rhinos that have had radioactive material injected into their horns | Julia Evans

Would injecting radioactive material into the horns harm the rhinos? Before actual use, researchers used experiments and modeling to find just the right dose of radioisotope to ensure that it would not harm the animals, but would ensure that it would trigger the reaction of radiation detectors even if it was buried in a pile of cargo.

Quoll Good Neighbor

With good neighbors, people can adapt to new environments more quickly - and the same goes for eastern quolls.

The Eastern Quoll is a marsupial that lives in Australia. However, due to human impact, they became extinct in the Australian mainland in the 1960s and can only be found in the southern island of Tasmania. Recently, in order to avoid inbreeding, some new Eastern Quolls have been introduced to the reserve , and researchers want to see how they settle into the new environment.

Eastern quoll with a tracking collar | Tracey Nearmy / ANU

The researchers found eight new quolls and eight native quolls and fitted them with tracking collars. At first, the new quolls moved aimlessly throughout the reserve, but over time, their range of activity became smaller and smaller, and overlapped with the range of the native quolls. The researchers believe that this is because of the "anchoring effect" of neighbors, which makes the new quolls tend to move nearby .

What is even more surprising is that, although they are solitary animals, the new quolls were quickly accepted by the natives and even lived together warmly and shared nests. This is great news for their reproduction - new residents can increase the genetic diversity of the population and avoid diseases that may be caused by inbreeding.

Sleeping together is the best! | Rexness / Wikimedia Commons

Hippopotamus flying

Don’t be fooled by the hippopotamus’s large size; when we run, our four limbs are in the air too!

The average weight of a male hippopotamus is 1.5 tons, and the average weight of a female hippopotamus is 1.3 tons, but they can run very fast , even up to 30 kilometers per hour. The researchers were curious about how such heavy animals could run so fast, so they used a high-speed camera to record the gait of the hippopotamus from a distance.

Take small steps forward! | References [5]

The researchers found that hippos only run when they are being chased by another hippo, and the chasing hippo is usually dominant. Their running gait is more like small steps , rather than the wide and open gallops of horses or rhinos. When they run, 15% of the time, their four feet are in the air - although each time lasts only 0.3 seconds, it is a remarkable achievement for such a large body.

Hippos not only run like this on land, but also underwater - when you see hippos moving in the water, they are not actually swimming, but running forward in small, super-fast steps underwater.

Running in water | Jedesto / Wikimedia Commons

Snake parthenogenesis

The picture below shows a male Brazilian rainbow anaconda named Ronaldo, who has been living in a British university for many years. Some time ago, the veterinarian found that it was a little fatter than usual, as if it had eaten a big meal. At first, no one paid attention to it, until recently, it suddenly gave birth to 14 little snakes ...

Only then did everyone realize that it was actually a female.

Male Brazilian rainbow anaconda Ronaldo | References [6]

However, even if it is a female, this is incredible - it has been living alone, isolated from the world for nearly 10 years, and has no chance to mate. Therefore, it gave birth to a child this time by parthenogenesis , which is asexual reproduction. The egg does not need sperm to fertilize, but combines with the polar body in its own body, and the child born is equivalent to a clone of the mother.

Now, caregivers are busy building 14 new breeding boxes, and when the snakes grow up, they will go to their new homes.

Ronaldo gave birth to 14 snakes through parthenogenesis | City of Portsmouth College

Parthenogenesis has been documented in many species, including sharks, birds, lizards and snakes, and research suggests it is more common than we thought . Previously, it was thought that females of these species would only choose parthenogenesis when there were no males nearby; but later it was discovered that in many cases, even if males were present, females would choose to ignore males and reproduce parthenogenetically.

Author: Cat Tun

Editor: Mai Mai

Title image source: x

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)