So we’re not unique in our practice of helping comrades when they’re hurt. NewScientist (22 April 2017) notes that ants do it, too:
Megaponera analis, a species found in sub-Saharan Africa, feeds only on termites. It sends armies of 200 to 500 individuals to raid their nests. However, the raiders often sustain serious injuries. Ants that lose limbs are severely handicapped immediately after the injury. But if they are carried back to safety they adjust within a few hours and can run almost as fast as uninjured ants.
“At first, they kept tripping over, because they thought they [still] had six legs,” says Erik Frank at the University of Würzburg, Germany. “Inside the nest, they were safe to adapt and change their locomotion.”
Frank and his colleagues observed 54 raids by these ants in Comoé National Park in Ivory Coast, using infrared cameras to see inside their nests. On average, three ants were carried back after each raid. Most had a termite clinging on to them, and some had lost a limb. …
Frank thinks that several traits of this species made this behaviour likely to evolve: they hunt in groups, they have a high injury rate, and they have very small colonies, which means each individual is valuable.
There is something reassuring about ants assisting their wounded, even if it appears to be a numbers game. It does make you wonder about why we help our own, even in the era of massed armies. I suspect it has to do with a social contract – people won’t venture out for war if they know they’ll just be left on the field of battle when an arm gets blown off. The commitment, so strongly expressed by many military forces, to bring back the hurt, even the dead, is a reassurance to the potential soldier – and may take the place of other bonds present in smaller, more homogenuous groups, who might be motivated to fight by religious or xenophobic reasons. In more heterogenuous societies, the appeal to a more primal urge will be more effective.
