Infectious Selflessness: How an Ant Colony Becomes a Social Immune System

[MindMover]

Ants work together to battle a deadly fungus by diluting the infection across the colony

In the 2011 blockbuster thriller Contagion, a virus infects and kills 26 million people around the world. But even those who evade the virus are infected with something else: crippling fear. To contain the outbreak, the military imposes a quarantine. People stay indoors, refusing to interact with anyone outside their families. Touching anyone or anything becomes a risk, because the virus lingers everywhere.

Ants do things differently. When a deadly fungus infects an ant colony, the healthy insects do not necessarily ostracize their sick nest mates. Instead, they welcome the contagious with open arms—or, rather, open mouths—often licking their neighbors to remove the fungal spores before the pathogens sprout and grow. Apparently, such grooming dilutes the infection, spreading it thinly across the colony. Instead of leaving their infected peers to deal with the infection on their own and die, healthy ants share the burden, deliberately infecting everyone in the colony with a tiny dose of fungus that each individual's immune system can clear on its own. Such "social immunization" also primes the immune systems of healthy ants to battle the infection. These are the conclusions of a new study in the April 3 issue of PLoS Biology.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ants-social-immune-system

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Pretty darn amazing..............

[Demoiselle]

1. Wow.

We've got some tiny ants scooting around our kitchen counters. (Springtime! Whoopee!) I think I'll stop being irritated at them and just leave 'em be.

[ashling]

2. I put this on a group set up for my government class

Last edited Wed Apr 4, 2012, 12:38 AM - Edit history (1)

with this tag:

"This is not related to government - or is it?

Edit: I just got back to the computer and one of my better students commented:

"HA! Everything is related to government."

I don't know if I'm getting through to them ... or if he had my wife last semester.

[msongs]

3. I welcome your small pox and ebola, infect me now lol nt

[JDPriestly]

4. The rare person who is naturally immune to a disease

will have offspring who may inherit the immunity.

You would have to go through a lot of generations to get an immune population for a deadly, contagious disease.

The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days.

http://lingolex.com/ants.htm

Ants may have the time, but humans don't. Ants go through several generations a year. It takes us many, many years to go through several generations and benefit from the immunity of a few.