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Now we see the violence inherent in the system: these ants (Megaponera analis; Africa - Mozambique in this case) are in mid-raid of a termite colony. It's not a "war"; the termites always lose. These ants eat only termites. Scouts go out looking for termite colonies, and when--
--they find one, they run back to tell their nestmates, then lead the raid. While in Gorongosa NP I saw several raids. I came upon this one while heading to breakfast one morning. The major workers are among the largest ants in the world. They rush about, crushing termites--
--in their mandibles (maybe stinging them too from what I saw), then the colony gathers up the dead termites and heads home. Termite soldiers do fight back, sometimes clipping off ant legs, but to no avail. What's really cool is that these ants care for their wounded. If an ant--
--loses 1 or 2 legs but can still stand, it emits a pheromone that causes its sisters to help it home. If it's so severely wounded it can't stand, it doesn't emit the pheromone and is left behind: self-triage. The ants not only rescue the wounded, they treat their wounds. Any--
--termites still clinging to a wounded ant are removed, and the open wound is "licked"/cleaned by the other ants. The study I read found that the mortality rate for wounded ants was 80% if left untreated, but only 10% when treated by nestmates.
Here's the paper I read, btw: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5829198/
