Page 18 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #05

WILD NEWS

To the rescue: an African
Matabele ant gives aid WILDLIFE
UPDATES
to a comrade in need.
TUMMY TROUBLE
Bombardier beetles,famous
for squirting hot jets of toxic
chemicals at assailants,
can use their arsenal to
escape from the belly of a
toad.Biology ts
that 40 per ce
swallowed b
to escape b
amphibia

DEEP
In the c
the dee
sea,eg
can ta
Q ENTOMOLOGY
years
NATURE’S HEALTH SERVICE incub
Acco
to Sci
Biologists have documented medical treatment, too, with nest- But how injured does an ant Repo
what is quite possibly the mates licking the wounds and have to be before it is regarded as howev
first example of animals limb stumps of fallen fighters. a lost cause? Intriguingly, it’s not white skates s
administering first aid to others. “We suppose that they do for the paramedics to decide. In things up by depositing
Erik Frank of Germany’s this to clean the wounds and what appears to be a noble act of their broods around
University of Würzburg already maybe even apply antimicrobial selflessness, mortally wounded hydrothermal vents.
knew that African Matabele substances with their saliva to ants refuse to cooperate with
ants carry their injured reduce the risk of bacterial or their saviours – they even lash PICKY EATERS
comrades back to the nest fungal infection,” says Frank. out at them violently to ensure Venus flytraps don’t eat
following battles with termites, It certainly seems to work. the colony’s resources are not their friends.Research
which are prone to biting their While 80 per cent of wounded wasted on them. published i American
legs off (Discoveries, July 2017). ants die without medical help, Naturalist shows that the
But Frank has now shown 90 per cent of treated ants pull insects that these plants
SOURCE Proceedings of the Royal Society B
that they administer life-saving through and rejoin the frontline. LINK http://bit.ly/2oW54Ii catch for food don’t pollinate
them,and the ones that
do,don’t get caught.The
flowers and traps may be
Q EVOLUTION
designed to be attractive to
THE NOSES HAVE IT T diferent species.

It has long been suspected that reproductive ability FACIAL ATTRACTION
the fleshy pendulous schnozzes – indicated by testis To human eyes, red-
of male proboscis monkeys size,” Koda adds. “The fronted lemurs are
serve as a sexual signal. But
nguishable facially
indistinguishable facially
number of harem
females was larger as
now we know it. New research
from t the closely related
well. To put it simply, the
rufous s brown species. But
shows that males with bigger
Ants: Erik T. Frank; proboscis monkey: Suz Eszterhas/M nden/FLPA; skate: Citron/Wikimedia/Creative Commons; lemur: Bernd Rohrschneider/FLPA has long been admired, to act as a ‘badge’ snozzle is report ts that
BMC E Evolutionary Biology
noses attract more females.
large nose appears
“Though this unique feature
red-fro onteds,
of strong male
explanations for its evolution and
can sp pot the
characteristics.”
its ecological role had remained
difere ence,
But a pendulous proboscis
unclear,” says Hiroki Koda of
even from
is not only symbolic of its
photos.
Kyoto University, Japan.
owner’s qualities. It also brings
“We found strong correlation
practical advantages, functioning
between the size of an enlarged
as a resonator to make a male’s
nose with [both] physical strength
A super
vocalisations lower and, therefore
a sign of a
SOURCEScience Advances LINKhttp://bit.ly/2D7le6C
18 – indicated by body mass – and more broadcastable. strong male. Spring 2018
BBC Wildlife