When the battle is done the victors head home, their march broken only to gather the wounded, who are hauled back to base for life-saving treatment. 
 
 Not a heroic scene from the second world war, but the daily grind for African Matabele ants, which leave their nests in the hundreds to launch raids on feeding termites – and risk life and limb in the process. 
 
 Researchers who study the ants have shown before that the social insects pick up their injured and carry them home. Now, the ants have been spotted caring for their casualties: cleaning their wounds and perhaps even administering antibiotics to fend off infections. 
 
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 It is an unprecedented glimpse of nursing in nature, a programmed behaviour that significantly reduces deaths in the ant colony. “What we show, for first time in the animal kingdom, is a proper treatment focused on a wound,” said Erik Frank, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Wurzburg. “We have anecdotal observations of wound care in other animals, but none that have been studied scientifically.” 
 
 Matabele ants, or Megaponera analis, reach 2cm in length(0.8in) when fully grown, and feed on termites for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To find their next meal, the ants bypass the well-defended termite mounds and instead send scouts into the savannah to spot termites feeding on dead plant matter under the ground. 
 
 When a scout returns with a termite sighting, the ants prepare a raiding party of up to 600 individuals which head straight for the location. On arrival, the larger ants break through the overlying mud, while the smaller ants swarm in to kill their prey and carry the carcasses home. 
 
 The raids are rarely without casualties on the ant side. About a third of the smaller ants that take part in termite hunts lose a leg at some point, courtesy of the termites fighting back and nipping off their limbs. Many ants lose only a single leg, but others are maimed so badly they can no longer stand. 
 
 In three years of field experiments in the humid savannah woodland at Comoé National Park, Ivory Coast, the scientists watched more than 200 ant raids on termite feeding grounds. They noticed that ants returning from a hunt performed a swift triage on any casualties they encountered. If the injured had only one or two legs missing, they were picked up and carried home. But if their injuries were much worse, the ants were left behind. 
 
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 To study the insects more closely, the researchers moved six colonies into artificial nests at the national park’s research lab. There, scientists captured remarkable footage of ants caring for others with missing limbs. “We don’t know if they are just removing dirt from the wound or applying an antimicrobial substance to fight off an infection. But we do know that if they don’t receive the treatment, 80% die within 24 hours. If you allow the treatment for an hour, the ants survive,” said Frank. 
 
 Injured ants call for help by sending out distress signals in the form of pheromones. When help arrives, the injured ants tuck in their legs so they can more easily be carried back to the nest. Frank showed that coating dead ants in pheromone summoned helpers, but the ants soon moved on when their fallen comrades failed to tuck into the right position. 
 
 The scientists believe a simple rule governs which damaged ants are saved in nature. After battle, the first priority of an injured ant is to stand up into a resting position. From here, it can release pheromones to call for help. “Heavily injured ants cannot get up again, they keep thrashing around, ignoring everything around them,” said Frank. As a result, the most severely injured either fail to call, or do not assume the right position to be carried home, and are left for dead. “It’s very simple, but it enables the ants to triage the injured. If you can stand up you are still useful,” said Frank, whose research appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 
 
 “One of the fascinating things about ant society is you can get very complex and sophisticated behaviour without any need of cognition or knowledge of what you are doing,” Frank said. 

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 Erik T. Frank 
 
 A species of ant has become the first known non-human animal to tend the wounds of its fellows. “Nurse” ants lick the wounds of fallen comrades, and this helps them survive. 
 
 Matabele ants (Megaponera analis) live dangerous lives. Several times a day, parties of 200-600 soldier ants set out to hunt termites, dragging them from their nests and carrying them home. The termites fight back, and their powerful jaws can administer lethal bites, so Matabele ants frequently lose one or more limbs. 
 
 In 2017, Erik Frank, then at the University of Würzburg, Germany reported that Matabele ants routinely carry their wounded back to the nest. This is odd, as social insects usually treat each other as expendable. The injured ants could “ask” for help by releasing a pheromone, which caused other ants to pick them up and carry them. 
 
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 In a new study Frank, now at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and his colleagues have filmed what happens inside the nest when the injured are brought in. The footage shows “nurse” ants spend several minutes licking their fallen comrades’ wounds. 
 
 An experiment in which some ants were denied this licking suggests it is a lifesaver. Without it, 80% of ants who had lost limbs died within a few hours. Of those that received medical care, 90% survived. 
 
 “We don’t know yet if the ants are just cleaning the wound and removing debris, as we do with our wounds to prevent infection, or if they are also applying antimicrobial substances with their saliva,” says Frank. 
 
 Either way, the treatment works. “The ants are able to reach running speeds similar to healthy ants, despite missing a leg or two,” says Frank. 
 
 The team also tracked the ants’ raiding parties and found they could tell which injured soldiers were worth saving and which were a lost cause. 
 
 “The ants were selective in who they picked up,” says Frank. “They didn’t want to help heavily injured ants who had lost 5 legs.” 
 
 Erik T. Frank 
 
 Ants that only lost one or two legs pulled in their remaining limbs and kept still, helping the other ants pick them up. However, mortally injured ants flailed about, effectively preventing their own rescue. 
 
 Lightly injured ants sometimes over-egged the pudding, over-emphasising their injuries when they were near their nest-mates. These injured ants moved slowly and kept on falling over when their comrades were nearby, possibly in hopes of being picked up. However, if nobody helped, they would quickly get back up and follow at a faster pace. 
 
 Altruistic ants? 
 
 Although primates are known to tend to their own wounds, this is the first time an animal other than a human has been shown to give medical care to others. 
 
 The behaviour probably doesn’t arise from feelings of compassion, says Frank, but because the ants’ survival depends upon it. Matabele ants live in small colonies with low birth rates, and their taste for termites means each ant risks mortal injury every day. 
 
 “Roughly a third of the colony have lost a limb at one point, so if they didn’t rescue them then many would be killed on the return journey,” says Frank. The treatment may also prevent infection spreading in the colony. 
 
 Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2457
– A species of African ant lives a life so fierce that it's become expert at wartime triage. In fact, the behavior exhibited by Matabele ants marks the first time that non-humans have been observed "systematically nursing their wounded back to health," per National Geographic. Researchers lay it out in a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: The ants regularly raid termite colonies, and many of the ant soldiers end up with injured or even lost limbs in the process. At that point, the wounded ants send out pheromones that amount to a call for help, explains the Guardian. They go still as other ants carry them back to the colony, where the triage takes place. Other ants take turns intensely licking the wounds, with remarkable success—90% of injured ants who received this care survived, while 80% of those blocked from receiving help in the study died. "We don't know yet if the ants are just cleaning the wound and removing debris, as we do with our wounds to prevent infection, or if they are also applying antimicrobial substances with their saliva," says lead researcher Erik Frank of Switzerland's University of Lausanne, per New Scientist. One intriguing find: Ants who were grievously wounded—those who lost multiple limbs, for example—didn't send out calls for help on the battlefield, perhaps knowing it would be futile, or didn't assume the correct leg-tuck position to be transported back to the colony when "medic" ants did arrive. Only those with lesser injuries were helped. And a funny find: The researchers say lightly injured ants sometimes behaved "more injured" than they actually were, maybe in an attempt to get a lift home. But once passed by, they picked themselves up and followed the pack home. (Behold the world of mutant ants.)